


This Killing Time

by SpoonerizeSwiftness (SplickedyHat)



Series: Heavy In Your Arms [7]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: "There's No Such Thing As Pale Rape" Is A Lie, Alternate Universe - Abolished Hemospectrum, And Other Life Lessons, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Douchebag Rapists Go On Trial In Court Of Law Like They Fucking Deserve To, F/M, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, M/M, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Rape Aftermath, The Author Regrets Nothing, Victim Blaming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-14
Updated: 2014-06-23
Packaged: 2018-01-24 17:00:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 46,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1612583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SplickedyHat/pseuds/SpoonerizeSwiftness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You have literally no more patience for bigots who think they’re justified in spitting on people as long as they’re spitting down.  But you’re the Sufferer Reborn and you have the imperial right (granted by the emperor) and you have the duty (granted to you because you’re a shithead with bright red blood, because they think you can save them all, because you /want/ to save them all) to try to talk this kid around into just confessing and getting a sweep or two of punishment.  If he fights, it could go so, so much worse.</p><p>In the scandalous aftermath of the attack on a coldblooded imperial bodyguard, the Emperor feels the weight of his wings and the crown they won him, and finds out that all his hard work hasn't gone as far as he thought.  The Imperial Spymaster struggles to balance what matters to him against what matters to the empire, the Second Sufferer fears for his moirail and his followers.</p><p>Eridan just wants everything to go back to normal.  Fuck this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Only To Condemn

Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you are out of patience for bullshit.

You are the leader of a cult you didn’t want to lead in the first place.  Bullshit number 1.  Your moirail trails around after the emperor like an idiot and every time they’re out of the public eye they start getting all flirty and touchy-feely and rapping at each other like it’s a goddamn mating ritual.  Bullshit number 2.  And bullshit number 3, you have to spend basically all day every day teaching people how to treat each other like actual people with feelings, when they should have learned this shit at pupation. 

You have literally no more patience for bigoted asswipes who think they’re justified in spitting on people as long as they’re spitting down.  But you’re the Sufferer Reborn and you have the imperial right (granted by the emperor) and you have the  _duty_  (granted to you because you’re a shithead with bright red blood, because they think you can save them all, because you  _want_  to save them all) to try to talk this kid around into just confessing and getting a sweep or two of punishment.  If he fights, it could go so, so much worse.

The imperial spymaster and head of security is sitting next to you—just as done as you are, you think.  He has to watch this kind of bastards all day, through all his ubiquitous camera lenses, and he’s spitting sparks from all four horns and both eyes are glowing.  You don’t want to fuck with Sollux Captor when he’s glowing and sparking.  You almost feel sorry for the poor moron sitting across from you.

Almost.  There’s still purple blood under his claws.

You pull out the prisoner’s file and flip through it while he sits and glares at both of you.  Yellowblood.  Nine sweeps, oh, why are you not surprised.  It is your experience that from the ages of six to ten sweeps people do 70% of the stupid shit they’re ever going to do in their lives.

But this is worse than trying to scale the palace walls while heinously drunk or attempting to set the record for ‘most people on a public monument’ without lawful permission.  This is the rape of a palace guard—and your unofficial bodyguard, for all that the paperwork hasn’t gone through yet. (You were going to call him in for a meeting about his new position, but they told you “ _he’s gone, he’s been here for nights straight so we sent him home_ ” and you didn’t argue.)  This is one of the vile pieces of shit that still slithers out of the dark shadows of the homeworld, even after so many revolutions and upheavals and laws.  This is an imperial crime. 

You lower the file and sigh.

“…do you know why you’re here, kid?”

You can almost see him try to filter what he’s about to say and then give up.  “—because the emperor fucks coldbloods,” he says, and yeah, there’s the tremulous bravado, he’s trying to put on a brave face and he’s scared shitless but he doesn’t care, haha, cull me, whatever!  God.  “—so that makes them an Imperial privilege, right?”

“Oh man,” you say, and pinch the bridge of your nose because  _wow_.  “…oh god.  Okay.  First things first—”

“You were arrested because you committed acts of rape,” says Sollux, cutting you off.  His voice is very quiet and even, perfectly calm.  The only sign that he’s not nearly as collected as he sounds is the soft, tooth-buzzing hum through the air, the strange, careful, formal way he puts sentences together and the tiny shards of electricity dancing between his horns. “We’re here to give you the chance to  _explain yourself.”_

“It wasn’t  _rape_ , okay?”  the yellowblood blurts out—he looks sulky and humiliated and furious, like a brat who just got caught stealing something petty from a store and is now acting like he didn’t know paying was even a thing.  “He went berserk.  We didn’t have a choice.”

Sollux twitches at your side.  The fine hair on your arms and the back of your neck is standing up where you’re near him—he’s shooting off little threads of lightning.  Fuck, he needs a moirail.

“You  _tore up his fins on purpose_  so that he would ‘go berserk’,” you say, and you’re walking the fine line between your iron-clad responsibility to be the objective one here and being too angry to breathe.  “We have accounts from multiple sources that Ampora asked you to move and told you he didn’t want trouble,  _and_  implied that he had a moirail before you deliberately mutilated him and then committed various heinous fucking acts of pale rape on his person including triggering his submission reflex without his consent, are you denying it.”

“There is no such thing as—as fuckin’  _pale rape_!”  The yellowblood throws up his hands, disgusted with you all.  “—especially not on coldbloods, everybody knows they’re crazy as fuck!  Even if it  _was_  a real thing, why the hell should you care?  What does some whiny fish-troll have to do with you?!  If someone here is fucking him or something they should have put their color on him so everyone else knows he’s—”

There’s a horrible screech of chair legs on rough floor and the prisoner screams and thrashes as he’s dragged up into the air by his throat.  Sollux is on his feet, drawn up to his full height, horns lowered and teeth bared, and the kid thrashes and claws at his throat, gasping, as Sollux snarls,  _“—I’m going to make you fucking_ beg _him to forgive you, you little—!_ ”

“Sollux!”

You grab him by the front of his shirt and drag him around to face you.  He’s breathing hard and fast and he snarls at you, eyes wide and wild.  You doubt he’s even registering your face.  For a second you want to pap him, your hand twitches—but then you feel how rough and warm his skin is and imagine sad, hurt  _resigned_  purple eyes on you and you just bite your tongue hard and shake him roughly instead.  He grunts and then blinks and shakes his head hard, and the glowing points of his pupils focus on your face.  Good.  At least he sees you now.

“Put him down,” you say firmly.  “ _Now_ , Sollux.  I’m not going to shoosh you, so  _calm yourself down_  before I have you escorted out, do you understand me?!”

He stares at you and doesn’t answer.  The prisoner chokes, struggles weakening to weak twitches.  You have no time for this—you click your fingers, and the door opens almost immediately. 

“Get him out of here,” you say to the guards outside, never taking your eyes off of Sollux’s face, and let go of him.  “I’ll take this from here.”

Sollux hardly fights as he’s led out, but he doesn’t lower the prisoner slowly either—he drops him hard.  The kid crumples to the ground with a yelp as the door slams shut.  You let the silence sit for a few seconds as he pulls himself shakily to his feet, breathing hard and coughing.  There’s a rough bruise already starting to tint his throat yellow-brown.

“Now, I’m going to ask you again,” you say, with the icy, almost sweet calm that you know scares the shit out of people who have heard you preach, “…are you denying the charges?”

You were hoping that, as shitty as Sollux’s timing for an outburst was, it would at least make a dent on this kid’s bone-headed bravado.  But he just sneers shakily and settles back in his chair like he always meant to drop into it like that, his legs aren’t shaking.  Not at all! 

“Well shit, let me think!” He wheezes, and makes a big show of thinking about it for about a second and a half before he slams his hands down on the table.   “—yeah, I am!”

…alright. 

Never let it be said you didn’t give him every chance.

“Fine,” you say, and stand up, pushing your chair back.  “…the rest of your cohort was smarter than you then, they threw in for imperial mercy and gave us a full testimony after just a few minutes.  Now, normally if we convicted you of a crime against another troll the punishment would suit the crime, but in cases like yours that’s somewhere the imperial justice doesn’t like to go.  So you’ll probably just go to prison.  Or few years indentured.  It’s really none of my business what happens to you.” 

He’s going paler and paler gray.  You’re still so angry at him, there’s so much platonic hate in you for everything he represents, but there’s still a jolt of sickly, equally platonic pity that goes through you.  He’s a moron.  But he’s also just a stupid kid. 

“Don’t do unto others,” you tell him, a little more quietly, “…or you’ll have it done unto you.  Right?  Learn from it, kid.  Nothing good comes out of being an asshole for no reason.  No matter who you’re being an asshole to.”

“He was just a purple blood,” says the kid, and the bravado is draining out of his voice—he sounds lost.  “He was just…we just wanted to see his fins, he wouldn’t…”

“Save it for the court.” You knock on the door—the guards step back in.  “Take him back to holding.  Get him a…what, a…’protection’…lawyer?”

“Defense attorney,” says Winnow, and ducks off to get it done. 

Now.  Time to go and find out how bad it is.

Time to go see Eridan.

\--

Your name is Sollux Captor and you are furious.

You don’t really realize that’s what’s going on until you put your hand on a painting, suddenly unbearably disgusted at how it’s hanging a hair’s width uneven on the wall, and burn a handprint into the canvas where your skin touched it.  You’ve been floating so high on cold, electric rage, you didn’t even realize what was going on; only now do you come down enough to feel how your vascular system is working overtime, thundering in your thinkpan and throbbing in the bases of your horns.  Every blink is a sharp little jab of light as your eyelids cut off the constant venting trickle of psionics through your eyes, your feet leave singed footprints on the stone as you walk.

You have to calm down.  Where can you go to calm down?

You don’t mean to walk to FF’s garden, but that’s where your feet take you.  She’s sitting under the trees in the soft purple light, watching the moon-flowers bloom, and you stop and breathe for a second.  All of a sudden the way your heart is beating in your chest feels less like you’re about to burst out of your skin and more like you’re a pointlessly gangly six-sweep-old again, curled up at your husktop and daring to flirt with people who would never see your face. 

Except she can, and she will, and you’re pretty sure she’s going to see that it’s bright yellow.

And for some reason, since it’s her, you don’t mind.

She turns around when you walk into the garden—she and ED both seem to do that, like they feel your presence in the air. You think about sharks and how they’re supposed to be able to feel when there are fish and make a mental note you’ll never remember,  _electromagnetic fields?_ But she’s smiling at you and you forget about it basically immediately.  You’re still shaking, but if you can just forget about it for now—if you can  _not think_  about why you have power crackling up and down your spine and your hands are itching to choke something…

“Hello,” she says, and it feels like there’s nobody else in the world.  (There are people who hate her just for her blood color, there are people who would rather hurt her than make her smile, what’s  _wrong_  with them?)  “How did it go?”  She gets a closer look at your face, and immediately her smile falls.  “…what’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” you mumble, and flop down next to her.  “Sorry, FF—uh, Feferi.  Ms. Peixes.  _Fuck_.  It’s fine.”

She swats you on the arm. You do not fall over and groan in agony, but only because your muscles seize up at the sudden pain.  Holy shit she’s strong.

“This case is about my moirail, Sollux,” she says sternly, and you immediately feel like a heel.  “I need to know.  What’s going on?  You look terrible.”

Some part of you stubbornly holds out for another few long seconds, and then you give up and slump.  “The asswipe who attacked him is denying the charges,” you say weakly, and rake your fingers through your hair.  Your horns are aching.  “He said some shit…he…ugh.  I…I got mad.  I tried to strangle him.  KK had me thrown out.”

She covers her mouth with her hand, eyebrows rising, but at least she doesn’t say anything that could be construed as pitying.  She does that a lot and it makes you feel all twisted up and breathless and stupid and you don’t need to deal with that right now. “What sort of things did he say?” She asks, and you groan. 

“…I know this is your palemate,” you say through your fingers, and you feel wretched and stupid, like you’re the weak one for not being able to tell her, but the thought of repeating it makes your stomach turn.  “…do I have to say it?”

She puts a hand hesitantly on your shoulder, and for some reason (because it’s her) you let her.

“Ms. Peixes?”

You both jump—her hand leaves your shoulder as you turn back to the door into the garden.  There’s a man standing there in a white coat.

“Ms Peixes, we’ve been informed you’re Mr. Ampora’s moirail,” he says, and does a sort of professional little bow-nod.  “—we’d like you present for an interview.”

“Oh,” says Feferi quietly, and then takes a deep breath and smiles at the doctor.  “…of course!” She turns back to you.  “Let’s go down and see him,” she says, and you yelp as you’re jerked upright abruptly.  “Come on!  Let’s go see him, Sollux, I bet you’ll feel better.  I know I will!”

You’ve already been down to see him once, when he was in surgery to fix his mutilated fins.  Seeing him does actually sort of make you feel better, just because he’s  _alive_ —although it kind of makes you want to punch things and scream at the same time.  He looks small and weak when he’s lying in bed, bandaged up and limp.  He looks pitiable.  You don’t want to pity him, you want…

…you don’t want to pity him.

But you follow them.

\--

It doesn’t make you feel better. 

Eridan looks dizzily pleased to see company when you come in, and they take him off the drugs and it’s great to see his eyes clear and start to flick around the room again, sharp and wary.  But then the head doctor settles in and turns to  _you_  instead of him and goes, really gentle, “can you tell us when the trauma occurred?” and it just goes downhill from there.  You don’t blame Eridan for refusing to answer when you or Feferi try to direct the questions at him instead.  He’s tough, you know he is, his endless capacity to just deal with whatever gets thrown at him is one of the things you can’t stand about him and keeping him there to be talked about, quiet and drugged and weak, seems to you like the worst possible insult.  It’s making you twitchy and angry again. 

And then the door opens and doctor  Zatnis comes sweeping in with all the imposing majesty of a tidal wave.  All the polite lackeys leave at a speedy scurry, heads down, as she advances into the room.  “So you’re Ampora,” she booms, and Eridan jumps a little and leans back in his bed as she approaches.  “Alright then!”

More people come through in her wake, too, catching the door and slipping in while Zatnis takes over the room just by existing.  You glance over, and cringe just a little bit—it’s KK and TV, and neither of them looks very happy.  Tavros looks like he’s about to fall over.  Karkat looks like he wants to bang his head against something until either it breaks or he passes out.  He doesn’t get to you first though, thank god—Tavros grabs you by one arm and leans in before Karkat can get close enough to ream you out for fucking up his interview. 

“—I came as soon as I heard,” he says quietly, and glances over at Eridan, slumped on the bed and half turned away.  “I was away on business—I can’t believe this, right at the palace’s front door—” He bites his lip.  “…what quadrant…?”

“Pale!”

Everybody turns at once.  Eridan is still turned away from you, but you can almost see him squaring up, you can imagine him baring his teeth.  He’s angry.  That shouldn’t make you feel as good as it does.  “In case anybody was thinkin’ a askin’ me instead of goin’ over my head like I’m some kinda delicate fuckin’ flower!”

And then he turns around, sees who he just yelled at, makes an absolutely hilarious yelping sound and throws himself off the bed and onto his feet.  Everyone in the room dives for him at the same moment, and you manage to catch most of his weight and slow his fall enough that Tavros can catch one of his arms and Feferi can grab the other one. 

Eridan stares at Tavros as he’s lifted back onto the table, with this  _amazing_  look on his face like he’s been hit with something really heavy.  He looks so  _stupid_  and you try not to laugh at him and fail a little bit, but he doesn’t seem to notice.  His face is turning purple.  Yeah, Nitram’d. Nobody meets the emperor in person without wandering away afterwards with a slightly dreamy look on their face and a new loyalty to the empire.

Karkat breaks the moment. 

“There’s nobody in this palace we don’t bring here on purpose,” he says sharply, and Eridan’s face turns to him instead.  He still looks blank and shocked.  Actually he looks kind of scared, and you don’t like it.  But you want him to  _get_  this at the same time, you want to see it get through to him that he’s  _not fucking disposable_  and hey, maybe there are people who actually think he’s pretty strong, maybe strong enough to—

…huh.  Well fuck.

You shut that line of thought away to look at later ( _he almost died he almost died and if he had what would you have never said, what did you want when you bugged him just to see him hiss at you?_ ) and blink—one bonus of your blank, glowing eyes; nobody can tell when you’re not paying attention.

…ED just burst into tears.

“Oh my god,” says Tavros, and glances around at all of you helplessly.  All of you stare back, just as confused, and Eridan shakes and chews on his lower lip, hunched up like he’s trying to stand at attention and not show his face to anyone ever again at the same time.  “—oh no, uh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…shit, I’m sorry.”

Eridan is already shaking his head.  “—no,” he chokes, and tries to straighten up—his voice keeps cracking, every word is obviously a fight with himself and you just want him to fucking  _cry_  if he has to cry, what the hell, his stupid suicidal pride—( _you want to beat that out of him, make him cry until he stops fighting it and doing this_ stupid _self-destructive shit_ ).  “—no,  _I’m_  sorry, I’m—I just—disgraceful, I—oh god, I’m sorry…”

Feferi reaches out and reels him in against her, and he stiffens for a second and then crumples on her, shaking, letting out tiny, trembling sounds.  Feferi looks up at you all, eyes all dark and vulnerable and it’s like you’re seeing right down inside of her.  You try to breathe and fail; she holds him like she’d fight you all for him. Like she’d kill for him.  Like she’d die.

Oh god, you’re a moron and you are feeling stupid moronic things right now fuck, the last thing she needs is a scrawny, angry socially inept nerd hanging on her when she has so many problems to deal with already but she tries so hard and she’s so amazing,  _fuck._

“I think we’re upsetting him,” says Tavros, and you look away from them and do your best to batter your feelings back into the tight little box where they belong.  “We should let him rest, I think.  If he has anything to say, or to ask…?” He looks at Feferi.  She’s still bent over Eridan, murmuring in his ear, petting his hair and his tear-streaked face. 

“You’ll have to bully him into it,” says Karkat, and he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about.  Gamzee grins a little sheepishly.  “Being someone’s moirail isn’t just taking care of the big psychotic breakdown fuckery, it’s dealing with them when they’re being horrible fucking stubborn little shits.” 

“…hey,” Gamzee protests, but without any fervor.  Feferi’s mouth quirks up at the corners.

“If he has questions,  _make_  him come and ask us, okay?”  Karkat says, like an order, and he reaches out and takes his moirail’s hand for a second, squeezes it and lets go.  “—we’ll leave it in your hands.”

FF looks up and nods.  Eridan starts to shift as well—she ducks her head back down and keeps his face turned away, hides him from you, and he lets her. She looks tired and troubled and tender and you have got to stop trying to describe her to yourself because it’s making you stupid.  Ugh.

“We’ll get out of your way,” says Karkat, and then he turns to you and all the hot, stupid red fog drains right out of you.  He looks pissed,  _shit_.  “Sollux, I need to talk to you.”

Fuck.

“KK,” you start, and he gives you a look that feels like a punch in the face. 

“ _Sollux._ ”

Oh well.  Time to man up and take what’s coming to you.

You follow them out and KK waits until the door is shut and you’re part of the way down the hallway before he turns around and turns the full force of his glare on you. 

“You’re  _an imperial official_ ,” he snaps, quiet and icy.  “You’re  _impartial_  in this, Captor!”

You don’t answer.  Not much you can say. 

“Did he plead guilty?”  Tavros asks quietly, and Karkat makes a scathing noise.  Tavros frowns and bows his head slowly. 

“What were you even thinking?!” Karkat snarls at you, and he shoves you—you stagger but you don’t fight back.  You can still see that sudden crumpled, wrecked expression on ED’s face and your blood is pounding in your ears. “What good was it supposed to do, lashing out at that moron?!  It just makes it  _worse_ , it makes them feel justified, why does it even—”

“I don’t  _care_!”

Karkat stares at you—your horns are sparking and your head is throbbing (and he was.  Fucking.   _Crying.)_  

“I don’t care how much good it would have done,”  _they had no right how dare they_  “—I don’t  _care_  I just want to make them  _beg him_  to forgive them, he’d  _crush_  them if he was allowed to fight—”

“Sollux.”

“—don’t know anything about him it’s just  _stupid_ , KK, they don’t deserve—”

“ _Sollux._ ”

“—can’t fucking believe he let them—”

Karkat punches you.  Gamzee grabs him.  Tavros yelps and dives forward between you like a suddenly-rising brick wall of gold embroidery.  Karkat tries to shake off Gamzee’s hands, but Gamzee just holds on to him—leans down and pats his face, murmuring something in his ear.  Karkat fights and snarls, trying to get at you—then slowly goes still, listening, frowning.

 “Let’s not do the punching thing,” says Tavros sternly, “—The last thing I need is you two fighting—or…” he hesitates, and you sneer at Karkat—he’s always up for a fight, why can’t he be up for one  _now_? You’re so  _angry_  and normally you would go and hunt down ED to bug him till he argues with you but he’s inside the room behind you, so weak he can’t stand on his own feet, crying on his moirail’s shoulder.  “—Sollux, I need you to stop, that’s  _really_  making things worse.”

“I know what you’re worrying about,” snaps Karkat, and Tavros glances over at him and frowns.  It would be a pretty scary expression if you weren’t so  _angry_.  “That’s not what’s going on here.”  He’s staring at you like he’s trying to see through you and you hate him for it.  “—It’s not about me, is it, Sollux?”

“Fuck you,” you growl at him, “—you don’t even—”

“ _Enough_!”  Tavros really steps between you this time, and lowers his horns in your direction, spreading his wings between you and looming to his full height—holy fuck, that’s actually terrifying.  “Whatever you’re trying to say,” he says sharply, and turns to glare at Karkat as well.  “—you can say it like adults!  I’ve been working all night and  _all day_  and I’m not putting up with this!  Sollux, you’re…you’re my friend, I know you do what you do for a reason, but, uh, just— _stop._   Karkat, I want you to like me but I’m not just, just going to put up with this.  Whatever you were going to say,  _say it_.”

“You don’t have to be ashen for us,” says Karkat, and Tavros turns brown but doesn’t back off.

“From where I’m standing, uh…” he glances from Karkat to you and back again.  “—it looks like I do.”

“I’m not the one he’s pitch for,” Karkat says, and fuck, this is not how you wanted to have this conversation.   “Tell him.  Go on, say it.”

“I…” how are you supposed to even talk with all these goddamn  _thoughts_  in your head? “—I don’t know if I—”

“I do,” says Karkat, almost gentle.  “Sollux.  Come on.  He drives you right off the fucking handle.”

Your face burns.  Tavros glances back at you, eyebrows raised, and you can’t meet his eyes, and you can’t open your mouth to deny it.

“…that’s what I thought,” says Karkat, and turns to Tavros again.  He doesn’t look angry anymore.  He looks worn out, like the anger draining out of him took everything else with it. “…he can’t be impartial on this case, Nitram.  You have to take him off of it.”

“ _What_?”

“I think he’s right,” says Tavros slowly, and he looks sorry, genuinely sorry, but not like he’s going to give.  “Sollux, you’re, uh…I think you’re too close to this.  I’m taking you off the—”

And that’s when you snap.

“ _You can’t fucking do that!!_ ” 

Tavros sways back a little bit away from you, but that just seems to make him even more sure.  He gives you that look that you’ve started to hate, where he’s made up his mind and he’s  _sorry_ , but he’s not going to give in now. 

“I, actually—I actually  _can_  fucking do that,” he says.  “I’m the emperor.”

“Only when it suits you!”  You spit at him, and he winces a little.  “Always  _oh, I’m just a normal guy don’t call me your humility_ until you want to throw your weight around—”

“ _Which is good_ ,” says Tavros, and it’s so quiet and even you almost keep yelling, except something inside you is suddenly tight and stinging, scared. Tavros is never frightening—intimidating, maybe, and he’s big but he’s never  _terrifying_.  “… _because if I was more of an emperor…you would be_ dead _for that.  Wouldn’t you_?” 

There’s a long second of silence.  Karkat looks almost as unnerved as you feel.  You’ve known TV for sweeps, and you’ve seen him turn the emperor face on people before.  More and more often these days…now that you think about it…but he hasn’t ever looked at you that way, or done anything that was so openly threatening. 

You did it.  You made another one of your friends hate you.  Great fucking job, Sollux Captor.

“I have to,” you mumble, and back away, a shaky step at a time.  His face is losing some of its tight anger, but you don’t stop to look at him.  “I.  I’ll.  I’m.” 

And then you turn your back, and you run.

\--

You haven’t locked yourself up in your room in a long time.  He could come and get you—of course he could, he’s the fucking  _emperor_ ,  why would you say that, how could you forget his temper, how slow he is to snap but how bitterly he resents it when you push him too far—but he doesn’t come in after you and you are cravenly glad.

By the time you drag yourself off of your couch, hating yourself for literally everything (and it takes you three tries, you start to get up and you just.  You  _can't_ ) it’s light outside.  Your computer has messages on it from encrypted channels, palace-local, and you know who they must be from.  AA says as little as ever, just tells you that they have other people watching your post and she would appreciate your return at your earliest convenience.

You know what she’s doing, keeping so scrupulously formal and cool, you know she can’t afford to feel things for you like she used to, but it still hurts like fuck.  You send back an equally professional message letting her know that you got her message and you’re heading back up to surveillance at 0900, and then, guilty and hurting, tack an unprofessional  _2orry for fuckiing up wiith your moiiraiil_  on the end.  You send it before you can rethink it.

Okay.  You’ve delayed all you can.  Time to go out and face the night.

As it turns out, that’s not actually accurate, because it’s not night.  Anyway, there’s nothing to face.  It’s a few hours after sunrise, getting towards high noon, and almost nobody is out and about that doesn’t have to be.  You pass some faces that you know—nod to them, and you get a nod back.  You think Tavros probably didn’t tell anyone why you were gone, and god, you don’t even deserve friends as nice as the ones you have, how did you get these friends?  He really could have had you killed, or at least punished pretty badly.  You have no idea how he’s managed to keep that weird  _mercy_ , ruling Alternia and the Alternian Empire as long as he has.

You pause for a second outside of ED’s door, but you don’t go in.  what if he’s awake still, and he sees you poking your head in like a creep to stare at him?  What if he’s not, and you have to watch him turn over restlessly and huddle in on himself in his sleep? 

No, you decide, you’re not going to open that door.

The door opens by itself.  You glare at it for a full five seconds, berating yourself for losing control of your powers, before you realize that there are no red or blue sparks dancing around the offending door, and that someone is backing quietly out of it, closing it very quietly behind them.  You recognize the graceful, fragile-looking horns and the waterfall of black hair the moment you see it, like a pathetic weirdo, but your voice still kind of cracks and it sounds like a question when you squeak, “…FF?”

She jumps about a mile and slaps a hand over her own mouth before she can shriek in surprise. 

“ _Sollux!_ ” she snaps at you, and then glances back at the door and lowers her voice to a hiss.  “ _You scared the ship out of me!!_ ”

“I’m.  Sorry, FF,” you say, and it hurts really bad to say it, because you’re not apologizing for startling her.  Not really.  It sounds kind of like you’re just really upset that she was surprised, which is idiotic.  “Sorry.”

She straightens up a little and gives you a strange little look.  “…Sollux?”  She says again, but this time it’s softer.  “…are you okay?”

“…no.”  The word rasps out of you so hard it feels like it’s cutting up the inside of your throat to say, but you feel a little bit better once it’s out.  If ‘drained dry and emotionally bruised’ counts as ‘better’.  “They, uh…they took me off the case.  They said I was—” and then you remember who you’re talking to, go yellow, stop talking.  “…sorry.”

She’s watching you, very sharp-eyed, and you wonder if she’s picked up on what you’re not saying, and how much she hates you now.  You don’t blame her— _you_  hate you too.  She’s so great and you suck and you wonder why she even takes the time to hang out with someone like you, sometimes.

“You’re so great,” your mouth says, traitorously.  “…I’m sorry.  And I.  Suck.  Supposed to protect everybody, y’know, but hahaha fucked  _that_  barkbeast pretty bad, so I mean that might be good—I mean it’s not good, it’s stupid, I fucked up, but—”

“Sollux,” she says calmly, and reaches out to take your face in her hands.  Thankfully, she doesn’t start shooshing you.  You think you’d probably die, and then you’d just be really really fucking upset because you know for a fact that ED needs her just as much as she needs him. 

“You’re cute,” she tells you, and squishes your cheeks between her palms, smiling at you.  “…but you think about things too much and then you don’t even say what you started out to say, and you sound like an idiot!”  Your ears go hot with embarrassment, but she just giggles.  “…I think I know what you’re trying to say.  I think you’re flushed for me.”

You can’t read a single thought on her face, just a calm, sweet kind of certainty.  Your pusher is thumping in your ears. 

“I,” you manage, like the fucking genius you are.  “—I-I mean.”

“You’re flushed for me.”

“ _Yes_ ,” you admit, like a wriggler caught stealing his lusus’s snacks. (It comes out all tiny and trembly and it sounds like ‘yeth’, fuck your hot life.)

She doesn’t answer.  She just nods once, and then she puts a hand on each of your shoulders, leans up as she pulls you down, and presses a soft little kiss on your cheek. 

Then she turns and darts away, and the last you see of her is the silky lash of her pitch-black hair as she turns the corner and is gone.

You stare after her for a full five seconds before it occurs to you maybe you should have said something.  Or.  Or done something.   _Anything_ , other than stand there like a useless tool and stare at her.  Hell, it’s not like you’ve never been kissed before, a lot longer and more interestingly than that, it just never shut you down like that and—

…wait.

Wait, she  _kissed_ you.  On the cheek, only a small kiss, but she definitely just kissed you, and with a kiss that gentle it could almost be pale but you know the empire would fall and the planet would burn before Feferi would break up with the moirail she has now. 

Is that…

…was that reciprocation?  Did she just say yes?

In your head, belated and wobbly from mood whiplash, your mental outline rearranges itself.  If FF moves up, if she’s in one of your quadrants, the whole web changes, if you—if ED—if—if she’s  _flushed_ for—oh god, oh god, what if she’s really flushed for you, what do you even  _do_  then?

You might get to kiss her.  On the  _mouth._

Oh god you are an actual six-sweep-old, it’s you. 

You can’t think about this now.  You’re the surveillance chief, not a giddy wriggler with a crush.  Come on Captor.  Go survey.

\--

( _Your name is Eridan Ampora and_ oh god oh fuck oh god you couldn’t even move it hurt so bad  _you can still feel their claws sinking through your fins and it’s all you can do to breathe and drop down onto your knees and cry because it’s not fair that this happened to you it’s not_ fair—)

\--

Your name is Sollux Captor and this is really not healthy.

Well no this is actually pretty natural, some parts of it, but it’s still kind of creepy.  You are a creep.  You hate yourself for it.  You came down here to spend your day like you always do, which is curled up in your chair hooked into monitors for the entirety of the palace, watching for anything out of the ordinary. You came down here to do your  _job,_ but you have this overwhelming need to own the internet and everything that happens on it and coincidentally also an overwhelming need to keep an eye out for the utterly loathsome purple-blood currently curled up on a couch in a spare room in the palace center.

ED is…

ED is freaking you out.  He’ll be wandering around his block, looking at things, and then all of a sudden, sometimes after a moment of sort of frozen silence, sometimes right out of the blue, sometimes in the middle of laughing or mumbling to himself about something, he’ll just… _break._

He’ll just crumple down onto the closest flat surface—desk, couch, chair, floor—put his head in his hands and sob.  Sometimes he’s like that for an hour.  Sometimes more.  Sometimes FF shows up and helps him up, calms him down.  Sometimes it’s only a few seconds, a jagged shudder or two and then he’s back on his feet and shaking it off.  It’s bizarre.  (You hate how fucking hard he’s trying to bottle it up when there’s people around, how when he’s alone he’s so  _breakable_.)

And you’re not allowed to help convict the shitstains that made him that way.

It’s making you jumpy (it’s making you want to hurt something) so you push your chair back, cross your arms on your desk and bury your face in them instead, hiding your stinging eyes from your monitors.  You should distract yourself, you  _need_  to distract yourself, before you go running off and do something stupid, like pushing him up against a—

Fuck.

You’re not going to tell yourself you’re not feeling what you’re feeling, because that shit is pointless and you are way too fucking tired to lie to yourself about your feelings.  Even the complicated, bifurcated ones.   (Oh god, FF, if you start pitch-flirting with her palemate—if she doesn’t—if she won’t…)

“Sir?”

You jerk upright and realize that you were dozing at your desk.  Everything reels for a few seconds as you get your bearings, and then you’re back in control and you turn and scowl at the figure in the door.  Don’t know the face.  Must be new. 

“The prosecution is here,” says the kid, and salutes.  It takes you a few long, groggy seconds before you realize you should probably salute back.  You do.  Sort of.  “She says she needs to see you, as soon as possible.”

“Can it wait until—”

“… _as soon as possible._ ”

You get up without another word, and follow the dim shape off into the dark.


	2. Both Your Heart and Mine

The prosecution is a small, pointy troll with a wasp waist, a fierce suit, and bright, bright red glasses. She salutes you crisply when you walk in, from a nest of scattered papers. 

“Mr. Captor, I presume!” she says, and…sniffs the air.  “You smell stressed.”

Oh.  Right.

Terezi Pyrope, the smartest, scariest legislacerator in the business.  She’s not just independent and incredibly skilled—very few other legislacerators have ever won a case again imperial preference—she’s scary because she’s a no-one.  Nobody has heard of Terezi Pyrope, except the people with good reason to be scared of her.

She’s also blind, and you’ve heard she can smell the color of your eyes from halfway across the room.  And if she can’t, she’ll come a little closer and lick instead.  She gets up with a sharp click of a pure white, dragon-headed cane, and comes across to shake your hand and if you weren’t looking for it, you would never notice how she holds her hand out in just slightly the wrong direction. 

“Ms. Pyrope,” you return, feeling like kind of a moron, but she seems to like the formality—or at least, it makes her giggle.  Then again, from the videos you’ve watched of her on the case, most things make her giggle, or smile that razor-toothed dragon’s grin of hers. 

“I need a briefing,” she says, straight to business, and heads back to her desk.  You stand there, not sure if you should follow, and then jump when her dragon-headed cane hooks out in a blur and drags you forward towards her. 

“I thought—you got the papers you wanted, I told them to give you whatever you—”

She dismisses that with a wave of her hand, a sharp little snap of her skinny, teal-knuckled hands.  “Not a  _paper_  briefing,” she says, and settles down in her chair, putting her very shiny, very pointy boots up on the desk.  They’re bright, bright candy red.  Sufferist?  Then again she’s been wearing bright red since a long time before Karkat came out in public as the descendent of the Sufferer and blew on  _that_ fire.  Maybe she just likes red.  “I have all the paper I could ever need, and more!  I mean a  _real_ briefing.  I need to know about Eridan Ampora, Mr. Captor, and not just from his work records, which are extraordinary only in their profusion!  He really does work rather a lot.”

“I would think,” you say, a little bit carefully, “…you’d know all about that.  I looked up your business records too.”

“Hmm.”  She laughs again, and you get the distinct feeling that maybe there’s more going on behind that laugh than you would guess.  It’s loud and showy and distracting, while she decides what to say next.  “I do appreciate a good work ethic, it is true!  One must, when one is on the bitter edge of chilly.  But my history of struggle, foul prejudice and eventual triumph is not the subject that I wish to discuss.  If you want to hear more of this thrilling tale, you must purchase my life story, which will soon be a featured school feed across the galaxy.”

You almost go “—what, seriously?”

Then you see her face.

“…I’ll look forward to it,” you say, and when she looks blindly over the tops of her glasses at you and purses her lips, interested, you feel like you’ve passed a test.  “Okay.”  You hook the chair with your psionics and yank it back, collapsing down into it.  “…I’m not the best guy to ask about ED, y’know.  You should talk to his moirail.”

“I will!”  She goes back to grinning that pointy grin again.  You’re beginning to think her face might be stuck that way.  “…but…I am afraid that if I begin by speaking to her, she will take the news of our political machination straight to the center of aforementioned machinations.  And Eridan Ampora must not know that this is taking place until it is too late for him to stop it.”

You knew it was true, but hearing it said aloud so matter-of-fact makes your hands twitch into fists on your lap. 

“…I know,” you say, a little quieter than you mean to, and she nods.  “He doesn’t think it’ll do any good to have a trial, the stupid fuck.  He figures he doesn’t mean anything, it’s—” You stop and pinch the bridge of your nose; your horns throb.  “…fuck, never mind.”

You look up, and she is regarding you, eyes shut and mouth slightly open, taking long, slow breaths of you.  You feel horribly, humiliatingly stripped bare, and you frown and close yourself off with a curtain of red and blue sparks that makes her jump and sneeze hard.

“That is a nasty trick,” she says admiringly.

“What did you want to know,” you ask her, firm and slow and quiet, “…about Eridan Ampora?”

\--

Your name is Aradia Megido, and—oh no.

Not again.

Tavros has been across the planet, meeting with some alien ambassador who claimed they were grateful to him for stopping the expansion of the Alternian Empire but who actually probably just wanted trade agreements and had heard that this emperor was a good deal more light-handed with the “give ‘em fire and blood” approach of diplomacy.  Compared to the Condesce, the Summoner had been almost fair and nearly kind—but a general and a rebel and a desperate man nonetheless.  Compared to the  _Summoner_ , Tavros seems as threatening as a wriggler with a stick for a lance.

You wish you could have been there to watch them take his gentle good manners and mild voice for weakness, just to see them get spun around and landed on their asses. 

But as much as he has learned that implacable sort of ruthless kindness that is Tavros Nitram, Emperor, there are things he can’t defend against and when he comes back to you, in the middle of the morning, it’s leaning on the shoulder of a guard, bleeding hard from a huge, darkly-bruised gash on his forehead.  He looks dizzy and sick.  You go straight to him as he’s settled down in his chair by his desk, and he lolls back in his chair and makes a sort of weak, muzzy grumbling sound as you start to poke carefully at his bloody forehead. 

“… _’radia…_ ”

‘Right here,” you pat his cheek firmly—he yawns and stretches a little bit, sitting up straighter in his chair.  Not just damage from whatever hurt him, then, he’s been sleeping.  That’s good.  You’d much rather he was tired and groggy than concussed or worse.  Even if…you think you know what happened.

“…did you see who threw it?” you ask quietly, and you know your suspicions are right by the way his face instantly crumples in pain.  It’s unbelievable, how small he can make himself look when he’s upset, hunching down like he wants to just press himself out of existence.

“Just a person in a…sort of, a cloak,” he says, and slumps back in his seat.  “…but, their blood was definitely, uh….definitely cooler, I saw…” he stops, and his lower lip trembles—he pins it in his teeth and stares fixedly at his lap.  If he’s left alone he’ll get it back under control, and he won’t cry and he won’t let himself hurt over this, and he’ll be back to working again by tomorrow night. 

 

“Go and get a medic,” you say absently, and hear footsteps retreating and the quiet  _click_  of the door closing.  You drag your chair forward, cup Tavros’s face in your hand.  “ _You’re okay now_ ,” you tell him, dabbing gently at his forehead and sweaty cheeks, and he resists for all of a second and a half before he leans into your hands and breaks down.

When he was a child, he used to burst into tears—loud, wriggler wails and sobbing, and he’d cling to you like you were his lusus or a comfort toy.  But that was then, and neither of you is the person you used to be.  He’s too worn for that now, and he’s broken too many times; when he cries now it’s like a slow release.  His face goes slack and almost peaceful, he barely moves to hold on to you, he leans into your arms and the only sign of tension is the way his shoulders hitch sometimes.

When he cries now, it’s like watching someone die. 

He tells you, slowly, how someone ducked out of the crowd and threw something—a brick, a stone, something hard, he didn’t see where it landed—and things blacked out for a few seconds, but there were people yelling, and then this awful, tearing shriek, like an animal—and by the time he was back upright and his guards were pushing the warmbloods away his attacker was a huddled, shattered corpse, twitching in his death throes. 

And then they’d flocked up to him and told him  _we’re so glad you’re safe._

“It just.  Makes me  _so angry_ when they expect me to be okay with things like that!”  He finishes, raking his hands through his hair and messing it into his eyes, and with the last of his tears drying on his cheeks, his bruised and swollen face and his shaking hands, he looks like a madman. He’s moving on from the crying stage.  You’ve seen this before too.  With no real conscious thought, you push your chair back a little.  Give him space.

“They were just trying to protect you,” you remind him, and he frowns and hunches, wings fluttering angrily. 

“I’ve made so many laws that they get  _so angry about_  and as soon as someone tries to attack me they decide I’m going to be okay with lynching them?!”  He scrubs his arm across his eyes and sniffs hard, and his cheeks are slowly going brown, his breathing is getting harsher.  “I’m going to—!” he starts, and you grab him by the arm before he can stand up, haul him back to his seat and settle him back down.  His eyes are still swollen from crying and he glares at you sullenly like this is all your fault.  He always does this, after he cries.  It’s just another thing that you have always and will always need to work him through.

“Tavros,” you tell him calmly.  “…you can’t charge into this.”

He looks, if anything, even more belligerent than before.  “I can so.  I’m the emperor.”

Now he’s just being silly.

“ _Shoosh_ ,” you soothe, and he tenses up and frowns at you.  “Tavros.  You can’t turn around a whole empire on a caegar.  You can’t afford to get angry like this, it’s wrigglerish and it will hurt more than it helps.”

“I’m just—!”

“You’re going to go and do something hasty.”  Why are you the voice of reason in this relationship?  Honestly if you didn’t have so many people who would probably suffer, you would definitely be letting him just go and fuck things up.  Things are so much more interesting when you add a healthy dose of destruction.  But you persevere and wrap him up in your arms even though he growls low in his chest and hunches away.  “Tavros, shoosh.”

He stays tense and unresponsive in your arms for another few seconds before you reach out and touch his face, stroke his hair—only then, slowly, does he finally relax.    

“… _I thought we were doing so well, Aradia_ ,” he says, tiny and defeated, and drops his face into your shoulder again.  You rock him back and forth and rub your fingertips gently over the shaved sides of his head, circling the bases of his horns—his are too big to feel it much, but he still sighs and sags a little.  “I thought…”

“We’re doing better than we were.”

“That’s not good enough.”  He’s exhausted.  You glance at the door—the medic you ordered is a spot of black in the light of the doorway, back turned, giving you time.  “Not terrible isn’t  _enough_.”

“It has to be.  For now.”

“Your Humility?”

It’s the medic, small and scared.  Tavros sighs.

“Come in,” he says, and grabs you by the sleeve as you start to stand again.  “Aradia.  I won’t do anything until I talk to you about it.  Okay?”

“Okay.” You duck back again, and he goes brown as you press a kiss to the crown of his head.  “…pale for you.”

He smiles wanly, still blushing brown, eyes swollen and wet, and kisses the inside of your wrist, romantic and archaically formal the way he knows you like it.  “Pale for you too.”

\--

TV got hurt again.

TV got hurt again and ED is giving you the cold shoulder for some fucking reason you don’t understand now that he’s back on his feet and FF is so worried about whatever’s got his horns twisted she doesn’t even have time to spend to look at you and you are so tired,  _so tired_  of hanging around feeling like an idiot while TZ— _Pyrope_ —picks out apparently random pieces of shit that she claims are completely necessary for her case.

But here you are again, going down and down to the door of the office she’s commandeered as hers.

When you shove through the door without knocking, she doesn’t look up.  You do catch the soft sound of a sniff though, as she takes in the picture of you in the doorway.

“They said you wanted me again,” you growl at her, and stomp over to her desk, pull the chair out with your brain as you go so hard it clatters.  You drop into it and have to catch yourself with your brain to keep yourself from going over, which does not improve your mood at all.  “Well.  Fucking talk already.”

Terezi is looking at you weird.  And she can’t even look at you, she’s fuckin’  _blind_ , so where does she get off just staring at you like that, just to throw you off?!

“ _What?!_ ” you snap at her, and she raises her eyebrows. 

“I have to look  _somewhere_  while I consider the case, lord Appleberry,” she informs you, prim and professional, “…do me the courtesy of not assuming I’m staring at you.”

Oh.  Well. 

“Sorry,” you mutter, and she giggles and shows all her razor-sharp teeth.

“…however, by coincidence I  _was_  looking at you!” She says brightly.  “—you smell troubled, Sir Captor.  You smell of worry!  You smell of sweet, sweet black licorice and grapes!  I think you have a more than professional interest in this case.”

Shit.

“What,” you say, and it’s blank, it’s too blank and you both know it.  “—I—no of course I don’t, what the hell?”

She raises her eyebrows at you. 

“ _Mr. Captor_ ,” she says, and that’s the tone of voice you’ve heard a hundred times in the tapes of her trials, the tone of voice she uses to hand out damning evidence and slam the nails home in the enemy’s suffocophagus.  “I have never smelled such a cloud of affectionately hateful liquorice pitch as the one you exude in the presence of our invalid Mr. Ampora.”

“Fuck you,” you snap on instinct, “—you’re not even psychic, you’re just a freak!”

And then you abruptly hate yourself.  But she doesn’t get offended, she just pokes at you and laughs again.  “I am!” she acknowledges.  “I am a freak of highest caliber, and through my freaky, freaky powers, I have ascertained that you find my client hopelessly hateful!  Are you going to deny it?”

You mouth silently for a few seconds, and then manage, weakly, “…I…want my legislacerator.”

“Oh, well-played,” she giggles, and pats you companionably on the shoulder.  “But I  _am_  your legislacerator, Mr. Appleberry.  Don’t deflect.”  And then, before you can come up with an answer, “…he has diamantic shock, doesn’t he?”  She spins her pen around her fingers, pretending her eyes are fixed on it and her attention isn’t all on you.  “It’s a common side effect of pale rape, Mr. Appleberry, don’t smell so surprised.”

“I don’t look surprised.”

“I didn’t say ‘look’.” She flicks the pen up in the air—and misses it as it comes down.  It clatters off under her desk and she sighs in aggravation.  “—please do not dissemble and avoid the question, Mr. Captor, I hear enough of that in the course of my work without hearing it in the course of my friendships.”

_Friendships._

You’re friends?

“…yeah,” you say, and your throat is stupidly tight and your chest feels all warm. “Yeah, he does.  He can walk now, though.  He’s getting better.”

She frowns.  “How many weeks has it been?  Remind me.”

You don’t like that look, especially on her face. You’ve known her all of a few weeks (although granted those weeks have been pretty intense, and you’ve been with her for most of almost every day) but you’re already used to her perpetual gleeful smile.  “What?  What’s the—”

She holds up a pointy little hand with a quelling “hhst!” noise.  You roll your eyes—not that anyone can tell, especially not her—and humor her.  “—about two and a half.”

“Hmm.”

You wait, but that’s all she says, just stares past your shoulder and licks her red thumbnail and goes  _hmmmm_  until your teeth grind.

“ _Hmm_  what?!”

She winces—fuck, she has to have better ears than you and you just yelled at her, ugh why do you suck so bad.   “What?” you repeat, quieter.

“He doesn’t have a pitchmate, does he?”

That takes you off-guard.  You’ve never heard ED talk about a kismesis—but he’s pretty private, too, would you have?  He doesn’t wear anyone’s colors, that you know of—not even Feferi’s, whatever cold color Feferi is.  You doubt he can afford anything nice to wear in his quadrants’ colors…

“…I don’t know,” you admit, and you hate yourself for not knowing. 

“I see.” She says, and you feel like she really does, somehow.  She’s not looking at you like she’s judging though.  “Well, if you would like my professional opinion—which you would, of course, because not to would be very proud and also unreasonable—I would tell you that he does not.”

“What? Why?”

She giggles.  “…because there is no better cure for diamantic shock than a down and dirty, pure, pitch-black fight, Mr. Appleberry, and they would have told him so.  Don’t you think if he had a kismesis he would have gone to them and speeded his recovery as much as possible?  He has a perfect work record to uphold, after all, look at all these commendations!”

“—wait.  Wait, back up.” You hold up a hand as she starts to flip through her papers for Eridan’s work records.  “—what do you mean, that’s a cure?  Having a kismesis makes it better?”

“Much better!” she sighs.  “…I have a paper somewhere, it smelled very dry and boring, but you have to know these things sometimes in the course of a prosecution—a good, pitch encounter would go a long way towards shaking out what’s—”

You stand up so fast you almost knock the table over.

“I have to go.”

“Yes,” she says peacefully, and sniggers into her coffee.  “…I thought you might.”

\--

(Lord Appleberry shows up to your next meeting with the smell of saltwater and pheromones all over him, a split lip and a bruise on his face.  You wiggle your eyebrows at him until he threatens to dump your coffee over your head.)

\--

Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you’re pretty sure what you’re doing right now is violating some kind of basic right.

Of course, trolls don’t believe too strongly in basic rights—but there are some things that, if you do them to someone else, nobody is going to blame that somebody for getting pissed and tearing your throat out.  Just register your intention to get revenge with an imperial official, preferably including your planned means of payback, sign a waiver saying you’re aware this is fucking stupid and you’re probably going to die because of it, and get on with your business. 

Keeping the trial secret from Eridan is one of those things that you’re pretty sure he could get paperwork for.

“I’m just saying,” you grumble, for about the eighth time in these proceedings, “…I’m pretty sure Eridan’s not all that fucking  _keen_  on going out in court and testifying!  You could  _ask_  him, before you set this whole thing up.”

“We can’t afford for him to say  _no_ , though, we need an example,” says Tavros distractedly, and flicks open a message on his husktop’s screen.  “…some things are well-known but not well-publicized and nobody, uh…” he trails off, biting his lip, frowning at the screen.  “…talks about it,” he finishes a few minutes later, distantly.  He holds a finger up to his ear, resettling his headset.  Terezi is off-planet, but you have her on conference call, which is a thing you absolutely despise.  You like to look people in the face when you’re talking to them, not watch them on a screen, lagging across half a galaxy.  “Terezi, as a…as a teal-blood, what do you think will be the outcome if we spread this story? I want discussion and awareness, not…more riots.”  He winces at the thought. 

“Well, I’m hardly cold-blooded enough to draw much attention in the street,” Terezi points out, but there’s a certain wry twist to her smile that makes you think maybe ‘much’ isn’t the same as ‘any’.  “But I would say this can go through without any outright  _rebellions,_ at least.  You will find, Milord Chocolate, that although the assholes and the law-breaking scum are the nosiest and noisiest, most trolls are fundamentally decent.”

Tavros hums deep in his chest, long and low and uncertain.  “…alright,” he says, finally.  “…assuming that’s…assuming that’s true.  We don’t have a rebellion, but we do have…?”

“Well let us put it this way,” says Terezi, and she spins in her chair, becoming a whirring blur of pixels for a second.  “…you should be glad that your position of power does not depend on something unconscionably dumb, such as the opinion of the people!  If you were not the gentle tyrant of the empire, milord, you would surely be out of a job.”

Tavros visibly bristles at the word “ _tyrant_ ” and opens his mouth to argue. “Suck it up, Nitram,” you snap at him, and he glares at you instead.  “You’re the nicest tyrant, okay?  People do what you fucking tell them, they  _like_  you, except the assholes who want the spectrum flipped instead of gone.  You’re the best we’ve got, deal with it.”

Tavros starts to say something angry and sharp, and then stops himself.  His wings flick and he raises his chin, pulling his horns back, getting rid of the threat—you barely realized he was tensing up and lowering his horns at you, but (as puny as yours are) you do realize all of a sudden that you were unconsciously mirroring him.  Good thing he caught himself, because you wouldn’t have noticed—Megido must have gotten to him. 

He looks better all around, actually.   You didn’t realize how shitty he was starting to look, but now that he’s starting to look so much better, it’s obvious how awful he looked up until this afternoon. 

“…I know,” he says, subdued.  “They do what I tell them.  They…they really, really do.  That’s what’s  _worrying_ me.  I could start a  _war_ , two planets fighting each other until nothing’s left.  I, I could…” he catches himself stuttering, the nerves in his voice—he takes another of those long breaths.  “…and there are people like Eridan, too, he’d do anything I asked him to.”

“Anything, up to and including providing evidence?”

You both turn to look at Terezi—you forgot she was there, for a second. 

“…maybe,” says Tavros cautiously.  “He… _really_  doesn’t want to get thrown out of the palace.”

“You would throw him out of the palace if he did not choose to testify?”

Tavros sighs.  “No,” he says.  “But he, uh…well, he seems awfully convinced I would, I guess is what I meant by that.”  He frowns.  “…I’ve been looking,” he says, “…and the coldbloods, the ones cooler than…probably teal?  They all seem to be the same way.  I didn’t notice the color, I just knew some people didn’t seem to… _get_  that I hire people, basically for their entire lives.  But it’s the coldbloods.  They all think that way.”

“Gamzee thinks that way,” you add, more quietly than you mean to, and he winces. 

“I know he does,” he sighs, and for a minute or two no matter how much you dislike him you kind of sit together and feel shitty about that. 

Terezi gives you a few seconds and then clears her throat pointedly.  “So you do believe that Mr. Ampora would testify?”  She repeats, and Tavros nods.

“I think he would,” he says.  “He wouldn’t be happy about it, though.”

“He’s been cooperative so far, hasn’t he?” On the screen Terezi chews on her lower lip for a second, considering.  “…we need to talk to him.  Get his story on how it really is, not on how we’re allowed to see it.  It would be best if he only talks to people he’s comfortable around.  And you, your Humility.”

Tavros looks surprised.  “What?”

“You should be present for his questioning,” says Terezi.  “You give the process due sense of legitimacy, sire!”

“I…” Tavros chews on his lip, then sighs and nods.  “…probably…should.  Do that.  Yes.  Okay.”

“Karkat, you are a beacon for the coldbloods,” Terezi says next, and looks to you instead.  “They respect you very much, especially Eridan.”

“Why is there an ‘especially’ in that sentence?” you ask, suspicious, and Terezi hesitates.

“…he has…reasons to emphasize equality,” she says, with more care than you are used to hearing from her.  “Personal reasons, Mr. Candy Red, and that is all I will say.  I believe a certain amount of coldblood solidarity is called for here, and my blood color conveniently makes this simple for me!  What luck.”

Not a fight you can probably win.  If she was here, you would try anyway, but she’s on a screen and you fucking hate talking to people on screens.  You just sigh instead and give up.

“Okay,” says Tavros.  “If that’s done, uh…what do we already know?”

Terezi looks down at her desk, invisible under the picture you can see, and picks up some papers, shuffling through them and sniffing. 

“…the numbers say that only thirteen percent of interviewed coldbloods, cerulean and below, have ever reported pale or concupiscent rape,” she says, and sniffs a new page; apparently she doesn’t get a good enough picture, because she pulls it up to her face and gives the paper a long lick.  “—black and red rape being hard to differentiate at times, of course.  Include openly hateful advances, harassment and unwanted interference between coldblooded pitchmates and the numbers rise to twenty-one percent, but that’s still not a very promising number…”

\--

“Eridan,” says Tavros, “…how many coldbloods do you know who’ve been, uh…harassed, or…well, worse?”

Eridan looks surprised for a few seconds, and then you feel your guts ache at the resigned look on his face as he realizes what he’s going to be questioned about.  “…you mean, like…” he frowns.  “…that’s just a thing that happens, y’know, everybody gets that if they’re pretty enough or look weak or like they’re not gonna fight back.  Your Humility.  Like, the yelling and the getting too close and shit, but nobody cares about that.  It’s only really gettin’ dangerous if you’re out and the street’s empty, and there’s…uh…” he swallows, a little harder than normal.  “…there’s more’n one of them.” 

 

It’s just you and Tavros there, in the end.  You would have asked Feferi, but she would cut him off when he started getting upset, and you and Tavros combined are capable of just enough cruelty that you know that can’t be allowed to happen.  You’re not going to  _try_  to upset him, obviously, you’re not a douchebag, but you can tell he’s going to end up that way and you can’t afford to have Feferi stop you. Terezi is there too, but not in person; you and Tavros both have the smallest microphones you’ve ever seen in your whole fucking life hidden on you where he’s not likely to notice them even if he’s looking for them.  The earpieces are a little more suspicious, but when Eridan gave them a look Tavros fed him some mild, friendly bullshit about Sollux getting a hold of you whenever he needs you.  Frequent reports.  All that shit. 

“…okay,” says Tavros, “…and…do you tell anyone?  Would you, I mean, if someone asked you?”

“What?” Eridan wrinkles his nose.  “Hell no.  I mean, if you’ve got a murder or a burned hive or somethin’, then everybody knows you report that because you gotta get dispensation and shit.  But what the fuck is it gonna do if you go to the cops and start whinin’ at ‘em, ‘ _officer, he kept tellin’ me how pitiful I was and describin’ to me how he’d shoosh me, she followed me home officerrrr, he was tellin’ me all the shit he wants to do to me in a private way an’ I was just so_ uncomfortable—”

“Okay,” says Tavros abruptly, and his voice is markedly less calm than it was a few seconds ago.  “—I’m going to assume, because this is a serious conversation and you are, uh…a pretty serious guy, I’m going to assume you’re not exaggerating.  And I would just like you to know—before you keep talking—that my anger is not directed in your, uh…direction.” He takes a few deep breaths.  Eridan looks vaguely confused, but nods and sits there at a sort of awkward attention while the emperor pinches the bridge of his nose and chews on his lip. 

“And someone even colder than you?”  Asks a quiet voice from the doorway.   Everyone turns around; it’s the emperor’s moirail, in her trailing rust-colored drapes.  She sweeps forward and crosses her arms, and Eridan’s fins pin back flat.  He doesn’t look angry—for some reason, all of a sudden, he’s scared.

“He’s a violet-blood,” says Tavros, confused, and Aradia gives him a sort of distant smile, never breaking eye contact with Eridan.  His hands are fists again.  “There…uh, there  _isn’t_  anyone colder than him.  Anymore, I mean.”

“ _What about_ ,” says Aradia over top of him, “…someone colder than you, Ampora?”  And then, softer, almost gently.  “…what about someone like Feferi?”

“They never got to Fef!” Eridan draws himself up, sudden and fierce, flaring his fins like a threat.  “— _never._   They tried and I killed ‘em.”  He sees the looks on the faces watching him—lowers his horns and crosses his arms stubbornly over his chest.  “They were breaking in,” he says, half a snarl.  “I used necessary force.  Ain’t illegal.”

“Not…the best option, either though—”

“ _Best option_?!”

“Eridan,” says Karkat slowly, but Eridan whips around to glower at him.

“Don’t you shoosh me, you ain’t my moirail and I ain’t yours!  You can talk about the  _best option_  when  _you’re_  street trash and people break into your house when your palemate’s asleep and try to  _hurt her_ , but don’t preach your feel-good shit at me when you’ve never even—!”

“Hey!”

Eridan jumps, growling—and then seems to realize who he was yelling at.  His fins flatten; the blood drains out of his face. 

“I respect that you’ve had some shit happen to you, and, that you’re sort of a friend,” says Tavros, and stands up to his full height, spreading his wings behind him like a threat display, lowering his horns to match Eridan’s  and stepping forward until Eridan has to step back.  “…but I’m the  _emperor._   Okay?  And, what I’m trying to say is, uh—you can’t talk to us like that.  I’m not going to let you.”

“I—” Eridan croaks, and swallows hard.  “—Yes sir, I—I apologize.”

“I have self esteem now,” says Tavros, a little defiantly.

“Yes sir.”

“Good.”  And just like that, the threat is gone.  Tavros drops back into his seat with a sigh.  It’s weird watching him do that—and he always looks weirdly tired afterwards, somehow, like being emperor drains him.    

Then he blinks and sits up straighter again.

“…wait.  What…what blood color  _is_ Feferi…?  I mean, she was anonymous, so I never asked, I didn’t, uh…I didn’t want to be rude.”

Eridan bristles again, but he gets it back under control this time and swallows hard instead of yelling.  “…she’s.  Fuschia, your Humility,” he says, and his voice is tiny.  “…like, properly royal fuckin’ fuschia.”

You nod slowly, giving yourself time to think, because  _wow._   Fuschia.  You didn’t even know any existed still.  “Okay,” Tavros says, eventually, because Eridan is looking from you to Tavros like he’s waiting for him to skewer him with his lance and you forgot that oh yeah, you and the stammering winged wonder over there are authority figures.  “—and she’s, I guess, not going to try to kill me and take over the throne or anything, because she’s really a very very nice person, I thought.”

“No!”  Eridan looks horrified.  “—please—please, she hasn’t ever done nothin’ wrong, she never even stole to eat, she’s never hurt nobody!”  His accent is a hell of a lot stronger when he’s upset, and he seems to notice because he clamps his mouth shut and takes a few slow, deep, shaky breaths through his nose and when he talks again his voice is back to normal—the accent is nearly nonexistent.  “…if you ever believed any of the hemoequality stuff you been fighting for all this time,” he says, “…please.  She’s just Feferi, okay?  She doesn’t have to be somethin’ else because of her blood.  Please.”

“…it does change things,” says Tavros slowly, and for a second your pump biscuit squeezes tight and skips a beat.  He looks thoughtful.  “…we should move you two deeper into the palace.  Where, I suppose the most important thing is, nobody can hurt her, and see her blood.  Or hurt her and not see her blood, would also not be preferable, but, uh.” He slumps back in his chair and blinks hard, raising his eyebrows.  “…wow,” he says.  “…uh…what kind of fuschia…”

“…you know the kind you’re thinkin’ of,” says Eridan, really quietly.  “…that’s the kind.  That she is.”

“Right.” Tavros opens his mouth.  Shuts it again.  “…right, okay, uh…wow.”

“Hold on,” you interrupt him.  “Stop doing the cagey bullshit and just say what you’re talking about out loud, okay, are you telling me that  _Feferi_  is the—”

“—the empress’s descendant,” Eridan finishes for you, and there’s something new deep in his eyes when he turns to look at you, a desperate sort of hopeless hope.  You feel kind of sick, being looked at like that.  “But I swear she’s not a thing like, gentlest soul there ever was, I’d put my life on that, I  _swear_ —”

“I believe you,” you say, and you’re…okay, fairly surprised…to find that you do.  Royalty would suit Feferi Peixes, but you don’t think cruelty would.  You can imagine her wearing gold and imperial finery.  It comes pretty easily.  By comparison, the emperor you’ve got seems kind of muddy, humble and quiet and stuttery.

But would Feferi Peixes try to make everyone equal, put up with trolls and their stubborn bullshit every hour of every night?  You can imagine her being sweet and granting gifts to people, ruling graciously, but even after a lifetime of taking shit for her fins and her anonymity she’s still…so…

“…milord?”  Eridan asks, and his voice is tiny. You blink and realize that you’ve been looking at him, frowning hard with the intensity of that convoluted series of thoughts.  You have to look pissed as all hell, Gamzee’s always mistaking your thinking face for anger. 

“…yeah,” you say.  “No, I’m with Nitram on this one.  About the time someone figures out just her color, the whole place is going to hell.”  Tavros nods and turns back to his moirail, who’s still standing by the wall—she comes over and he says a few quiet words to her.   You catch something about rooms, patrol patterns, guards, and she nods and leaves quickly, without a word to anyone else.

Eridan looks about like he’s going to cry.  You have to keep that from happening at all costs, so you clear your throat and try not to look at his face and think about what you’re going to say next.

“ _Back on track, gentlemen,_ ” says Terezi, and if the news shook her, it doesn’t show in her voice.   “ _More on the specific nature of day-to-day life, please, instances specific to him_   _are preferable.  As fascinating as this discussion is, it is not relevant!_ ”

“…so…” Tavros is back on track.  Which is good, because you can’t think of anything to say.  Too many revelations for one night, holy shit.  “…so a lot of them found your, um…your situation…they actually found you, pitiable, I guess?”

“Oh,” says Eridan, and he sort of…half-smiles, an unhappy grimace of a thing.  Your bloodpusher drops.  You don’t think you want to hear what he’s about to say, if it’s making him make a face like that.    “—I—yeah, I mean, I mean most of the pale ones are all _oh I bet you get this all the time but it must be so hard bein’ you, how hard is it not to just kill everyone here and paint in their blood, is it hard?_  Like I’m a purple instead of an indigo, you can’t even fucking  _paint_  underwater, those morons, and,” there’s this weird feverish look to his eyes, his mouth keeps quirking up at the corners into a sort of trembling grin and the more he talks the wider his fins spread and the more he shows his teeth, reacting to a threat that isn’t there.  “—and then if it’s red, like, ha, I had this girl once like  _you’re almost perfect, here we’re goin’ back to my place I’m gonna make you so beautiful_ and she starts tryin’ for my gills and she wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer, I had to knock her out and drop her in an alley, she kept talkin shit like handcuffs and knives like, wanted to see all that pitiable blood all over the—”

“ _Eridan_ ,” you say, sudden and sharp, and he stops.  He looks almost normal, but his pupils are tiny dots, his fins are flared so wide they tremble and his hands are shaking fists on his knees.

“Sorry,” he rasps, and this time it’s him who bows his head and rubs his forehead, wincing like he’s got a headache.  “…sorry.  Uh.  Yeah, we’re…y’know. People are pretty convinced we’re pathetic shit, and we don’t have a lot of ground to stand on to say ‘no’.  So.  Doesn’t happen too much, mostly if you get stopped they’re just gonna beat you up a little an’ move on.  Everybody knows violets get their fins poked at, purples get the blood-clown thing…” he trails off, frowning.  “…dunno what everybody else gets, those are the ones I heard about. But purples got a reputation for crazy and violets got the super kinky gills and fins and shit, ‘cause it’s not like those are  _sensory_  organs or nothin’, ain’t like I  _use them to feel underwater_ , they’re just there for people to—”

“ _He’s very unstable still, isn’t he_?”  Terezi doesn’t sound pleased.  “ _This will prove a problem if he begins to rant like this at the trial.  The last thing we want to present him as is unhinged.  That will corroborate the opponent’s story dangerously well._ ”

Tavros ignores her.  “… _and actual…_ assaults _,_ ” he says, quietly, and Eridan winces a little.  “…how common is that?”

“…I…” Eridan chews on his lip, and this time when he starts talking again he manages to keep himself almost steady, although his pupils are still tiny and his fins stay spread.  “…depends…where you live, and…what color you are, what you look like, if you look like you could defend yourself...depends on a lot of things, sir.  I’m, uh…” he shifts uneasily in his chair.  “…ain’t bad-looking, t’tell you the truth.  So that’s the kinda shit I get.  Woulda been worse except I dressed like a guard and I’m pretty broad, like, I got some muscle from my job.  If you’re skinnier, look like you’re not gonna put up a fight….could be a lot worse.”

\--

Your name is Tavros Nitram, and it’s lucky you’re so numb because otherwise you know you would be freaking the fuck out.  You don’t look at Karkat.  You can feel him not looking at you.  You know what you’re both thinking. 

“…I see,” you say, because Karkat doesn’t seem capable of saying anything—he’s staring at Eridan but not looking at him.  “Thank you for telling us.”

“Sorry,” says Eridan, like he did something other than answer your questions.  “…it’s better though, it is, sir, it’s better than when I was a wriggler, even.  We don’t get killed so much, now.  I’d say most of us got something that happened to us, one time or another, unless you’re real ugly or live in a real nice place, but we don’t die young so much anymore—”

“Thank you,” you say again, this time to cut him off more than to actually thank him.  He takes the hint and shuts up.  You need your moirail.  He needs his moirail.  Karkat needs his moirail too, but you try not to think about that, because it makes you feel kind of like you want to throw up.  “I…don’t think there’s anything else we need from you.”  Terezi doesn’t answer—you have to assume that means you’re right, she’s got everything she needs here.  Thank god.  Eridan looks as wrung out than you feel, which, in this situation, is saying something. 

Karkat gets up without a word, turns on his heel, and half-runs out of the block.  Shit.  You spare just enough time to give Eridan a look you hope is reassuring, tell him, “—you’re relieved of your duties for the night, full pay,” and then you’re out the door, chasing Karkat’s retreating form off into the hallways.  He must hear you coming, but he doesn’t slow down—you think he’s probably trying to throw you off his trail, especially when he deliberately goes through doors that he knows you have to turn sideways to fit your horns through.

“Karkat!”  You duck forward and finally catch up with him and grab his arm and he snarls and tries to pull free.  “Karkat, wait.”

 “I’m going to talk to my moirail,” Karkat says fiercely, and tugs—you keep a hold of his hand.  “Let go, Nitram, I’m not in the mood to deal with your  _bullshit_  tonight!”

“I know where you’re going.”  You saw how he flinched when Eridan said  _yeah sure none of us would tell_ ,  _all the weak ones, the vulnerable ones_ —you know what he’s going to ask.  “…and I.  I want.  To be there.”

Karkat stops pulling and goes still.  “…do you?”  He asks quietly, and the words sound poisonous. He turns, twisting his wrist in your grip, closing the distance between you to hiss into your face.  (His eyes are so  _red_.)  “…missing that newly-quadranted rush, Nitram?  Pity running a little  _low_?”

It’s been a long time since someone hit you so hard it physically took your breath away, but you remember the feeling and this is the same thing but a hundred times worse.  It’s a small mercy that you don’t let go, because you wouldn’t be able to move to chase him down—instead, your grip on his wrist locks.  You stare at him.  He’s still glaring at you, but he blinks once, twice, and seems to see you more clearly, focusing on your face.  Whatever he sees there, it makes him flinch.  Inch by inch, he goes small and still again, staring back at you.

For a few seconds, neither of you breathes.

“…fuck,” he says, finally, and his voice is small.  “Fuck.  I…no.  Listen, I’m…that was too far, wasn’t it.”

“Yes,” you say, quietly, still breathless and cold.  “…don’t ever,  _ever_ , say something like that again.”

He bristles a little at your tone and at the order—then takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly, and nods.

\--

Gamzee is lying in his block on his husktop on his chest when you come in, but he glances up when you open the door and then sits up and smiles brightly. 

Neither of you can smile back.  His face falls. 

“What’s up?”  He asks, and closes his husktop, getting up and crossing the room to you—you think he’s looking you both over for injuries, but Karkat grabs him before he can finish, keeping his hands off.  Gamzee looks openly distressed.  “—best friend, what’s harshed your chill, what’s the matter?”

“My  _chill_  is totally fine,” says Karkat, and he sounds almost calm but his hands shake.  “I just.  Need to talk to you.”

Gamzee glances at you.  You can’t offer much more than that—but whatever shows on your face obviously don’t ease his worry at all.  He looks borderline terrified, shrinking down.

“Did I—did I do somethin’—”

Oh.   _Oh._ His petrified expression suddenly makes a horrible amount of sense.  ( _All the coldbloods think that way_.)

“No!”  You say, and Karkat jumps and glances back at you.  And then back to his moirail.  “No of course not, that’s not what this is about at all.”

Karkat gets it a beat later; you hear him take a sharp little breath and see his shoulders slump.

“I’ve told you a million times, you massive insecure disaster,” he says, almost gently, “…neither of us is breaking up with you.  I never  _will_  break up with you, okay?  I’ll tattoo it on my forehead if you want, so you can just look at it every time you see me.  We…we have to talk about…something worse than that.” 

Gamzee mumbles something that sounds like “… _ain’t nothin’ worse_.” You think you’re probably going to die.

Karkat keeps a hold of Gamzee’s hand and leads him back towards one of the chairs scattered around the block, and you trail after them.  You feel slow and ponderous and dumb.  It’s…not fun.  Gamzee sits down very quickly and hunches there—you think, maybe, his knees are as shaky as yours feel.

“It’s about…before you met me,” says Karkat, and there’s a kind of hungry, scared urgency to his voice that makes you and Gamzee both shift uncomfortably.  Gamzee blinks at him.

“What—just…out on the streets, like?” He frowns.  “…I don’t like doin’ that, best friend.  It fucks you up.”

Karkat winces all over.  “I know it did,” he says, “—I’m sorry, I need—”

“No, not me, bro.”  Gamzee smiles crookedly, and pulls his hand gently free to pat Karkat’s chest, just over his pump biscuit.  “… _you_.  Fucks you up something awful.  Doesn’t mean nothin’ to me anymore, now I’m here with you and it’s over, but I know you get stuck thinkin’ about it over and over an’ all…”

“It  _should_ matter to you,” Karkat mutters, but he doesn’t keep pushing.  “…listen.  We’ve been talking to Eridan, and…he said some stuff.  And I was worried.”

“Stuff?” 

“Stuff about…” Karkat takes a deep breath.  “…Gamzee, did anyone ever…force you…to, uh…”

It should be funny that you (of all people) are the one finishing sentences for Karkat Vantas (of all people) when he can’t find the words, but you really can’t find it that funny right now. 

“Did anyone ever pail you, without your permission?”  You ask, and Karkat gives you a look that seems to be equal parts anger and gratitude.

“…I…I mean, I was in the business, y’know?” Gamzee frowns.  “Permission wasn’t my bit, best friend, that was my fr—my…that wasn’t my job.” 

That’s a whole other thing that makes you want to scream, but it’s not what you’re here about right now, and you and Karkat both take deep breaths to calm down at the same moment.  You haven’t ever seemed to get through to Gamzee properly what was  _wrong_  with how he used to live.  He knows that he was supposed to be paid, but he doesn’t  _get_  it. 

“ _Outside_  a deal, though?  When you didn’t want them to—even though you didn’t want them to?”  Karkat pushes, and Gamzee winces a little bit.  His eyes skitter off to one side, the air throbs around you and you think you might very possibly be about to throw up.  “ _Talk to me_.  Tell me the truth!”

“Hey!  Hey, shhh,” Gamzee says, and Karkat lets himself be settled back a little, still breathing hard, hands twitching.  Gamzee’s not doing that strange, tense thing where he looks ready to attack, but he looks crumpled, smaller, unhappy.  You remember how Karkat described him to you, as he used to be when he was still drugged; he has that hazy look now, retreating from reality, pulling away from you, and the way Karkat catches his breath suddenly makes too much sense.  Gamzee spends a long time (too long) fussing over his moirail, but Karkat reaches up and takes his face in both hands, turning it upwards, forcing Gamzee to look at him.

“… _tell me the truth,_ ” he says again, very quietly, and it’s physically uncomfortable, being there, seeing the way his eyes are pleading and his hands shake.  Gamzee can’t hold his eyes—he jerks free and shrugs, hunched down in on himself. 

“Nah,” he mumbles, but Karkat opens his mouth to say something and he winces and goes on.  “…I mean.  Not a lot.  Not more than a couple—uh.  Not too much.”

“Holy fuck,” says Karkat, and buries his face in his hands.  “Oh my god.”

“Shit’s gotta happen to somebody,” says Gamzee philosophically, like that makes it okay that it happened to  _him_ , that it happened to Eridan, that it could happen to anyone who’s just a shade too cold.  You realize you’re clutching at your stomach, there’s cold sweat on your back, your chest is aching and shooting pain through your bones.  “better it’s trash like me than a miracle like, like you or—” and then he stops, because Karkat’s shaking is rougher now, because Karkat just made a strange, rough, tiny sound into his hands, because Karkat…is…

“Oh no,” breathes Gamzee in a tiny, tiny voice, “—oh no, no, no,”  and he reaches out and gathers Karkat up into his arms as he sobs again, short and broken and strangled—Gamzee winces like someone just stabbed him.  He looks so lost, he has no idea what to do and he glances up at you, almost pleading but you’re too close to tears yourself to do more than stare. “No, fuck, I’m sorry, bro please—”

Karkat doesn’t answer, just wraps his arms around Gamzee’s bony chest, holds on tight to him and makes small, terrible noises, shaking all over, hiding his face. 

“I’m better now,” mumbles Gamzee into his hair, like that’s supposed to comfort him, “—I mean, I was selling, some folks can tell by the—” he traces a line over his throat—the place his old collar used to sit.  “—didn’t even hurt too bad, didn’t even reach me, best friend, shhh…”

Didn’t reach him because he was drugged out of his mind.  Didn’t hurt because he wouldn’t have fought, would he?  Maybe protested, sleepy and sad, and then—

You barely make it to the refuse receptacle.

“Tavros—” Gamzee starts to say, and there’s a weird sort of anguish in his voice but he can’t leave Karkat to come to you instead.   Karkat is still holding on to him and you know how much he cares about you but they’re  _moirails_  and Karkat needs him.  You must be catching something, some part of your brain realizes for you—you’re not strong, you’re so weak, but you’re not usually  _this_ weak.  Your stomach is churning, but you have nothing else to throw up. 

You kneel there, and Karkat cries, and Gamzee shooshes him shakily in the dark. 

\--

Your name is Aradia Megido, and a stupid seadweller without the good sense to watch the reactions of people around him has driven your moirail to distraction.

You know Tavros went to talk to his matesprit, and you were ready for him to react badly to the revelations about how bad things really still are in the coldblood slums.  You’re sick to your stomach and shivering as well, but you learned so much better than Tavros did that you can’t let these things get to the heart of you or you will burn up and burn out and you will  _die._   And he has, you think.  Tavros has died, over and over and over again.  You almost wish he could be as heartless as the old empress, some days.  You almost wish he didn’t care.

You find him slumped on his desk, head in his arms.  He’s shaking.  You slow down, walking silently—slide the door shut, with your powers instead of your slightly-shaking hands, so it’s quiet.  You know he knows you’re here anyway. 

You walk over—sit down in one of the chairs next to him, and just breathe.  He hears you there.  He’ll talk when he’s ready.

You sit there…thirteen minutes and twenty-eight seconds, by the clock that always ticks on at the back of your head. Before he shifts a little and half-turns his head towards you.  Not ready to talk then, but ready to be here, with you.  You lay a hand on the back of his head, and he shudders all over again when you trail your fingers through his hair. 

Another six minutes, before those terrible, shuddering little movements still.

“… _what am I_ doing?” He says, so quietly you barely hear him.  He doesn’t wait for you to respond, just raises his head enough to rake a hand through his tousled hair, gives a long, painful groan and goes limp.  His wings wrap up around him like he’s trying to hide under them.  When you sigh and lean down to slide them away, you catch a glimpse of one swollen, wet eye and blotchy, tear-streaked cheek.

“Tavros.”

“ _No_ ,” he says, very small and quiet, “… _don’t._ ”

“…then we don’t have to talk.”  You keep moving your fingers through his hair.  You’re alright.  He’ll be alright.  You’ve done this before, when he was young, when he was crying so hard he couldn’t talk to you, when he tripped over his own words.  He doesn’t need you to tell him what to do.  “...you’re upset about the coldbloods.”

One of his hands is closer to you, folded under his head; you watch, and his fingers unclench slowly.  His hands are shaking slightly, but it’s definitely deliberate when he taps one finger against the surface of his desk.  Once.  That’s a yes.

“…Ampora?”  You try, more tentatively than you would willingly admit, and he hesitates.  Spreads his fingers and closes them again.  Not a yes, not a no.  Well, it was too much to hope that it would be that simple.

“...Gamzee too,” you say, and it’s not a guess.  “…all of them.” He makes a terrible, tiny sound.  ( _Tap_ ) 

He knew that there was still wrong happening, you know he did.  But now he’s attached, now he knows victims personally and he  _cares_  and you wish he didn’t have to but if he didn’t he wouldn’t be Tavros anymore.  They’re his and they’re hurting, you couldn’t ask him to be distant from it.  That’s your job.  And there’s more, too, this is the worst possible time—you’ve been watching him carefully, he’s been pale and shivery and drowsy and ill for nights.  He’s been feeling awful.  This couldn’t have come at a worse time if it had been planned.

You make a note to investigate the possibility that this whole affair is deliberate sabotage, and stroke his horns. 

“You’re doing great,” you tell him, and pull yourself a little  bit closer.  He lets out a tired growl.  “You’re doing better than anyone ever has, but you’ve still got a job to do—”

“I don’t want to.”

“—everyone in the empire, they still  _need_  you—”

“I don’t  _want to_!” He yells over you, and shoves his chair back, surging onto his feet and slamming his hands down in frustration.  You always forget how tall he is, he looks so small when he’s tired and hurting and easily bent under your hands—he looms over you, his wings spread to their full span and papers go everywhere in the sudden rush of wind.  “I don’t want to do this anymore, I’m  _tired_  of having everyone depend on me, I’m not smart, I’m not strong, I’m just—!”

“ _TAVROS NITRAM!_ ”

He flinches, but he’s not cowed like he would have been, once upon a time.  You think, distantly, about moobeasts with big sad eyes, animals that will run until they're cornered and then turn into thousands of pounds of muscle and a pair of vicious horns.  He glares at you, breathing hard and fast and swaying where he stands. 

“ _Don’t,_ ” you tell him, and it’s almost an order.  “ _Don’t talk about yourself like that._ ”

“I  _failed_  them, Aradia,” he says, and you know by the burned-raw agony in his voice that that’s the heart of it, that’s what’s killing him.  You step forward into his space—he flinches, starts to take a step back, but you give it a soft little push with your powers, pull him to you, and he doesn’t resist when you put your hand on his shoulder and run it gently up to touch his cheek.  He’s cooler than he should be, clammy and sweaty and when you stroke your fingertips over one cheekbone you can feel some of the tension leave him, just a little.

“You knew how slow this would be, when you became emperor,” you remind him.  “You told me you knew how terrible things were, and that you’d try to fix them.  Do you remember what I told you?”

He doesn’t answer—still somewhere between that tense anger and painful vulnerability.  You wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t remember.  You’d been so young and he’d been so young, and you’d both been terrified.  They’d put a golden crown on him all of an hour ago—you remember how it sat too big on his head, only staying on because it rested on his horns, and the golden-brown paint at the corners of his eyes and the backs of his hands.  The golden hoops in his ears and his nose.  The patchy brown swelling around his too-bright eyes. It had been the first time you’d been alone since the coronation, and for the first time, both of you sitting there realizing that you’re powerful now.  That there’s nobody you can trust to tell you what to do. 

 _(I’ll, I think, I—_ )

( _Shh, slowly._ )

( _I’ll fix it, I’ll try, I...I’ll try to fix it, how awful everybody is…_ )

“We might not live to see the Sufferer’s dream come true,” you recite back to him, and he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath in and out through his nose.  “We’ll do everything we can, but there’s going to be some things—”

“…we…just can’t.”  His voice is small, and you nod and try not to feel everything that you’re feeling.  You hadn’t been sure, then.  You wondered if you could pity him.  Now you know.  “Aradia, I—”

You lift yourself up on a cushion of crackling power and kiss his forehead gently, and he reaches out and wraps his arms around you.

“… _you need some sleep_ ,” you tell him, and he sighs.  “You’re sick, you idiot.  You have to take care of yourself.”

He squeezes.  “I,” he says.  “I don’t want…to be alone.”

And he can’t go to his other quadrant, not now.  Karkat will be with his moirail, and yours needs you, but…

“I’ll follow you in a little while,” you tell him as gently as you can, and butt your horns against his.  “I’ll finish up just a few things, and then I’ll be there, alright?”

You send him off to bed, wings hanging limp and head bowed, and you pity him so hard it hurts.  You want to follow him and get him to sleep, give him a few hours’ reprieve from all the suffering he has to go through. 

You walk in the opposite direction, to the burden of the empire that waits for you in your office.  Wandering away from each other in the dark.

\--

You and Tavros are both technically supposed to be guarded at all times, although in practice the guards are usually reassigned to patrols after all the assassination attempts that have been happening since Karkat started throwing the empire systematically into new chaos.  The guard is there now, though—someone you don’t know.  New staff, probably—you’ve been hiring more than you ever have before just to keep up patrols. He nods at you and you nod back..

“Someone waiting for you, ma’am,” he says.  Tavros doesn’t require blood identifications, but he’s got a teal thread worked into his collar.   Normal enough.  What’s  _not_  normal, though…is that single stud set in his lip.  You would think that it’s a quadrant sign, but it’s not in the shape of any quadrant and, more importantly, the tiny stone is an unreal lime green.  Limebloods haven’t existed since the empress systematically exterminated them, hundreds of hundreds of sweeps ago.   It could just be something he liked, a color he’s fond of, but it’s very rare for someone to wear a shade that isn’t theirs or something close.  Color is too much of a charged topic right now.

You open your mouth to ask, and then sigh and shut it again.  You have to stop trying to understand every single thing you see.  You remember Tavros telling you that some time, god knows when.   _You can’t learn everything in the world, not all at the same time, okay?  Concentrate on what’s really important, uh…not that your other interests aren’t important, or, that I’m trying to—_ you’d had to stop him because you were giggling too hard, but you understood what he meant.  You aren’t free to devote yourself to every obsession and consuming curiosity.  If you did, you would forget to eat, you would forget to sleep.  And most importantly, you would forget everything you do, every hour of day and night, to keep the empire safe.

“Alright,” you say.  “…did this mysterious visitor give a name?”

“Ampora, ma’am,” says the guard, looking straight ahead, and you resist the urge to give a heartfelt groan.

Ampora is leaning over to look at your papers upside-down when you come in, and the slow reluctance with which he stops reading and straightens up does nothing for your mood.  You nod at him, slightly more coldly than you would like; he salutes crisply back.  You have never been overly fond of Eridan Ampora—he has a habit, you’ve observed, of signing up for extra work and then bitching and moaning about how much work he has to do, and how underappreciated he is.  He always salutes as you walk by, the picture of a perfect guard, like there’s nothing in his head but  _make money, guard well work hard._

And at the same time, he is unexpectedly shrewd, even cunning.  Tavros told you a few days ago that Gamzee told  _him_  that Eridan knows full well that they’re flushed for each other—that he’s promised to keep it a secret.

You’ve seen him bargain and wheedle and do anything he possibly can to make a single extra caegar.  You trust his promise about as far as you could kick him, and the thought of what might happen to the people you hold dear if he suddenly decides to sell that information to the highest bidder makes your teeth grind.

But he hasn’t done anything too wrong yet to your knowledge (except for  _yelling_  at your  _moirail_ , and you still bristle at the thought but he seemed to catch himself and apologize).  Anyway.  He’s had a few rough days.  You sit down in your chair with a heavy sigh.  There’s not a single sign that he had such an emotionally-charged interrogation, except perhaps the way his pupils are strangely large in the comparative brightness of your room.  He’s been to see his moirail.  You would know that dazed, distant stare anywhere.

“At ease.”

He settles a little.

“I heard you had something you wanted to address.”  You straighten your papers, for something to do.  (Right now you would rather go to sleep, or possibly go and watch a funeral or something—anything that might make you feel better.)  “Please be brief, I have other business to attend to.”

“Yeah,” he says, and glances around at the corners of the room.  “…we alone?”

Well that isn’t suspicious or anything.  You frown at him.  As it happens, you are alone—you haven’t allowed Sollux to put his cameras in your office, or in your room.  No use risking anything that might…rekindle any old flames. 

“Sollux can’t hear us, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Great.”  He slumps a little more, and it occurs to you he might have been standing so perfectly at attention because he thought his kismesis was watching,  _not_  out of respect for your position.  “You gotta make him stop meddling on the forums.”

You blink at him.

“…what?”

“The  _forums_!” he repeats, and takes a step forward, pulling his handheld out of his sylladex.  “look—”

“ _Ampora_.”

He jumps, and then snaps upright, back at attention.

“Thank you.”  You pluck the 

device out of his hand with your psionics and hover it over in front of you.  It’s…a chat room.  The only odd thing about it, as far as you can tell, is the fact that nobody is anonymous and everyone is even angrier than usual about some comment earlier on in the chat.  You scroll back—

Oh.

“He’s fightin’ my fights!”  Eridan is saying over top of you, and there’s a hint of a whine in his voice that puts your teeth strangely on edge.  “—I mean I don’t know how much history that nerd has even looked into—fuck, he ain’t ever been one for learning from mistakes—but this is just gonna piss everyone off and turn ‘em against the empire—”

“Or,” you say delicately, and let his phone drop onto your desk with a clunk that makes him wince.  “…it’s going to reinforce the idea of Imperial power and decrease the number of idiots disobeying the hemospectrum abolition laws in public forums.”

“Oh for god’s sake,” he snaps, and this time when he steps toward your desk your glare doesn’t seem to faze him.  “You’re supposed to be the smart historical consultant or something right, this is  _dangerous shit_ , taking anonymity away—“

You can shrug off a lot of unprofessional behavior and marginally insubordinate behavior, especially from someone who was recently hospitalized for a traumatic event, but you will not accept people questioning your fitness for your position.  You stand up and slam your hands down on your desk—

“Whoa hey, what’s got its going on in here?”

It’s Gamzee.  You both stare at him—his shaggy head poking in at the doorframe, silhouetted against the light from outside, casts a shadow between you and Eridan, and you realize that you were much closer than you thought. With you leaning forward on your desk and him advancing on you to lecture about  _things he doesn’t understand_ , your faces were less than a foot apart.

Apparently he notices the same thing, because you both lean back slowly in tandem.

“Just discussing something,” you say eventually, when it becomes obvious that Gamzee was actually waiting for an answer.  You manage to stop being angry for just long enough to smile; you’ve always liked Gamzee, not least because he makes your moirail so happy.  He looks drained, though—you’re not surprised, after seeing the looks on Karkat and Tavros’s faces before they went to go and talk to him.  “What do you need?”

“I just heard yelling,” he says, and the rest of his scrawny body follows his head into the room.  Eridan’s fins are pinned back, and your smile gets wider even though it niggles at you,  _he’s upset Gamzee disapproves, but he doesn’t care about your opinion you dirty_ rustblood— “Thought I’d get a little peek on in.  And the fucking sights I  _do see_.”

You’re…not entirely sure what that sentence was supposed to mean.  His words are wandering and deceptively mild as ever, and you learned quite a while ago that he can say things that sound neutral, even happy, when in reality he’s feeling nothing of the kind. That, you think, was disapproval, so far as Gamzee disapproves of things.  He heard you raising your voice.  Your cheeks warm a little.

“ _Ampora_  was raising some unfounded concerns about the Imperial security and hemospectrum abolition laws—”

“Oh fuck’s sake, I w-wasn’t ewen!”  Ampora snaps, full-accented, bubbling and bizarre with anger.  “She’s got the whole empire in her hand and she’s supposed to be  _tellin’_ Tav when he’s letting somethin stupid happen—”

“Here’s a revolutionary idea,  _sergeant_ , have some  _respect for your emperor_!” You actually bare your teeth and snarl at him, and he winces.

And then Gamzee steps in between you like a really skinny, bony wall.  “Whoa,” he says slowly, almost soothingly, and holds up his hands, scooting Ampora away from your desk a little. “…seriously though my main motherfuckers,  _whoa._ ”

“I could have you arrested for treason, Ampora,” you snipe past Gamzee’s pointy shoulder, and he turns a little and frowns at you.  You subside, just a bit.  “…I could.  He’s over the line!”

“Mm.”  He turns back to Ampora, bending down a little bit so they’re face to face.  “…Eridan.  Bro, come on.  You gotta save that up for our bro Sollux.”  Ampora winces.  You have to admit you flinch a little bit as well.  “Just ‘cause she’s all warm-like doesn’t mean you gotta be a little motherfuckin’ bitch to her.”

Ampora sputters.  Gamzee smiles at him and ruffles his cropped hair. Then he turns to you.

“…Aradia,” he says, and you feel like you’re probably being scolded but you can’t quite be sure enough to be angry.  He’s still smiling.  “… _you_ gotta not push over stuff,” he says.  “You’ve had hard times with coldbloods, I get that, but we ain’t all that bad.  Tryin’ to motherfucking claw your way up from the shit heap ain’t like tryin’ to shoot down folks and cheat and lie your way up into good life like the politerrorists do.”

“But—” Ampora starts, and “—I didn’t,” you start at the same moment; Gamzee holds up two thin, long-fingered hands, one in front of each of you, gently and firmly grabs you each by the face, and pushes you in opposite directions. 

“Nope.”

“He was—!”

“ _Nooooope_ ,” he drawls over top of you, and it’s only right then, when he lets go of your faces and crosses his arms between you, it finally clicks with you what’s going on.

Ampora gets there first.

 _“_ Sir—uh—Gamzee,” he says, and you can’t tell whether he sounds mortified or like he’s about to burst out laughing. “—are you  _hitting on us_?!”

Gamzee jumps a little bit, then looks down at himself as though to verify where he’s standing, and then looks at the two of you.  His mouth slowly forms an ‘o’.  You drop your head into your hands and wonder hopefully if your headache will go away if you slam your face into the desk until you knock yourself out.  You’ve been solicited before, in various quadrants, but nobody has ever managed to insinuate themselves anywhere near your ashen quadrant—not least because you’ve had nobody to hate, let alone someone who required a mediator. 

…if you had ever been guessing who would make an ashen move on you, you would not have ever imagined something like this; this bizarre combination of embarrassingly awkward and uncannily smooth that seems to personify Gamzee Makara.

“Guess I am?”  He says eventually, a little bit lost-sounding, and frowns.  He’s slightly lavender around the ears.  “…just think it’s a pretty shitty thing is all, you both tearing chunks when you’ve got Sollux settled in waiting for you to go make him not work no more—” (he transfers that weird, mild frown to you, and you frown stubbornly back but don’t argue) “…and him all duty-bound to not fuck with you ‘cause you could throw him out and then him and his moirail’d be fucked and she couldn’t pity Sollux no more—”

“He  _said_  I could call him ‘Tav’,” says Ampora sulkily, but Gamzee makes a sort of hissing, shooshing  _hssst_! noise.  He shuts up. 

“Two of you, come on, shake,” he says, and the amount of authority in his voice suddenly makes you jump.  He comes out with tones like these sometimes, and it makes some ancient, primal part of you sits up at attention with a sort of basic dread.  Then he’s normal and easy-going and all dreamy smiles again and the moment is over as soon as it started.  “And tell me you ain’t going around each other to piss nobody off.”

You look past him at Ampora, and for that second, the two of you understand each other perfectly.   He raises his eyebrows, looking about as shell-shocked as you feel.  Flicks his eyes to Gamzee and back to you.   _Are we going to let him do this_? 

You glance up at that pointy, purple-eyed face and its expression of vague disappointment and then back at Ampora and twist out a dubious little shrug.   _Why the hell not._

You shake hands.  He holds on tighter than he needs to.  You dig in your nails.

“Great!” says Gamzee, and pats you both awkwardly on the head.  “…motherfuckin’ sweet.  Uh…don’t do it again, I guess, and shit.”  He stretches and yawns.  “—‘kay, I’m goin’ to sleep.”

And then, as quickly as he came, he’s…gone.

You look at Eridan, and he looks back at you with a strangely shell-shocked expression that you’re sure you’re mirroring to a disgraceful degree.  Five minutes ago you had one quadrant filled, and it was steady and fulfilling and it made  _sense_  and now instead everything is confusing and there’s a nagging voice in the back of your mind, appealing to the basest ashen center of your pan, whispering  _don’t do it again_ …

What have you gotten yourself into?

–

( _Ashen?  What the_ fuck— _okay, okay, never mind.  We’ll talk about it later, okay?  I’ve got some more to do, and then I’ll get to bed.  No, fine, yeah sure.  Promise.  I said I fucking promise, okay.  Goddammit, Gamzee, stop it.  Go to your couch and get some_ sleep  _already._ )

–

( _Tavros?  No, nothing.  No, shhh.  Just scoot over.  I…have something to talk to you about.  In the afternoon. We can do it later, go back to sleep._ )

–

Your name is Karkat Vantas.

It’s the middle of the day but you’re still sitting at the desk someone hauled into the palace for you, wearing the red bracelets they made you wear for your first sermon. (You haven’t taken the fucking things off in public since.)  There are papers lying around, maybe too many papers, but it seems to make sense that there are so many, because you are so tired and that makes sense because there are so many papers.  So tired.

Gamzee is standing in front of your desk again, watching you.  He’s wearing sufferist bracelets too, and his old collar—it’s made of rubies now, and they’re so bright it looks like they’re on fire.  Nitram is at his shoulder, and Megido is at his, and Sollux behind her and Eridan behind him, his moirail, and behind her there are shadowy figures stretching away into the distance.  All of them crowded in front of your desk.  They’re all wearing those collars and those thin, burning-red bracelets.

The air smells like cooking meat.

“ _You should go to sleep, best friend_ ,” says Gamzee, but his face doesn’t move—he’s still just staring at you, staring,  _staring_ , that weird, worshipful watching he does when you’re giving a sermon, like a starving man tempted by food.

“I can’t go to sleep,” you tell him grumpily, and wonder if his eyes were always red like that. “I have a lot of work to do.  I have to take care of you.”

“ _We’ll take care of_ you _,_ ” they tell you, and Gamzee raises his hands towards you—the red is burning his skin, dripping red and purple blood down his arms and down his chest.  His eyes burn red and weep purple as they all raise their hands towards you in supplication, dropping to their knees.  “ _Sufferer._ ”

You reach for them, but they retreat.  You can’t see where they are—everything is hazy and slips away from you when you try to look at it, and they’re still whispering  _sufferer, sufferer_ , pouring their blood out for you, pouring out the stench of blood, iron, heat, roasting flesh—

Someone puts their hand on your shoulder.

It’s an adult troll in a long, dark cloak with scarlet stitching around the dusty hems.  The red doesn’t burn where it touches him; his skin is unmarked and strangely solid in the drifting, foggy dark that’s surrounding you.  You can see the smudges of dirt on his cheeks and a healing split in his lip with unreal clarity.  See his eyelashes flutter and the flash of his teeth behind his lips.  You’ve never seen him before in your life.

You know exactly who he is.

“ _Karkat_ ,” says your ancestor, and he reaches out to you, folding you up in his cloak.  You’re warm and it’s so soft and it smells like something good you can’t quite remember, and you struggle and thrash, lashing out at him even though you don’t understand why.  “ _You don’t have to be afraid for them.  Lie down and rest, child, you aren’t struggling alone._ ”

You pull clumsily away from him—try to tell him that it doesn’t  _matter_ how alone you may or may not be, you can’t lie down and rest or you’ll freeze because there’s an ocean of icy liquid around your knees, and you know without looking down that it’s blood, blue and purple and fuschia.  Fire is dancing on top of it (red, yellow, green) and when it spits sparks at you they’re splatters of blood too. 

The Sufferer reaches out and closes his arms around you again.  The sweet, dusty smell of his cloak hides the stink of iron, and you take deep breaths of it and this time you don’t fight him.  He helps you down to your knees, kneeling with you, laying you out in his arms with his cloak wrapped around you.  The ground around you is dry, a bare plain of stone.  You’re lying in blood.  The ground is dry.  The blood is so red, so bright, bright red, on your chest and your face, in your eyes.  Your head hurts.

“ _Rest, child_ ,” he tells you again, and you barely manage to be dizzily surprised when he leans down and brushes his lips over your forehead.  His skin burns like fire.  “ _Rest, Karkat…_ ”

“ _Karkat?_ ”

The voice is familiar, but it doesn’t sound like the Sufferer anymore, it sounds wrong and you’re being pulled somewhere, falling in a direction that doesn’t exist—

“ _Karkat?  Bro, you awake_?”

You jump as someone jostles you and then blink and you’re back in your slightly-too-cold respiteblock, curled up on your couch.  There’s still a thin beam of light spilling through one of the high, tiny windows.  It’s got to be no later than evening, your head feels too big for your shoulders and full of fog, and…someone is shaking your shoulder. 

“ _Karkat?_ ”

“ _Nngh_ ,” you say, and then, “— _‘m awake,_ I’m awake, what?”

You roll over awkwardly on the couch, shaking off the hand on your shoulder, and blink around blearily in a futile attempt to clear the sleep out of your eyes.  There’s a dark silhouette leaning over you, blurry and close.  It’s dark and you’re groggy, but the shape of the horns is familiar; even before your eyes adjust you’re reaching out to pap Gamzee’s worried face.  He jerks forward into your hand and he’s shaking, breathing hard like he ran here, bare-chested and very, very pale in the dim light.

“What?” you mumble, and feel your way across the sharp angles of his skinny face; his cheeks are cool and wet and that wakes you up a little more.  “—what’s the matter?”

He looks you in the eyes for a second, face contorted in some kind of pain that you can’t quite parse out, and then he dives forward at you and holds on to you so tight it makes your bones creak.  You choke and he eases up enough that you can hold on to him properly, press his head down into your shoulder and shoosh at him sleepily. 

“ _So pale for you,”_ he’s saying, over and over, muffled into your shoulder. “ _So motherfucking pale for you, brother, you don’t—I can’t—so much, so fucking_ much— _please—“_

“Shhh, Gamzee.”

“No—!” He shakes your hands off of his face, grabs them and folds them between his long fingers.  There’s a strange, almost manic intensity in his eyes.  “—no but you  _need to know_ —!”

You let him hold on to your hands, lean forward and just chirr softly in his ear.  He quiets slowly, and makes wordless, protesting noises when you try to shift, like he thinks you’re going to leave if he lets you go.  His grip on your hands was tight enough to hurt, but you manage to get one free to stroke the pad of your thumb over the dark shadows under his eyes and his eyes flutter shut, his breathing slows.

He does this sometimes—he’ll wake up in the daytime disoriented and confused, somewhere else in his head, asking you plaintively ‘ _where’s my palemate, my collar, they said never take off my—I don’t—_ ’.  (He kissed you once, unbearably flush and barely conscious—he was so angry with himself afterwards, red-eyed and tearing at himself like his own body was an enemy.)  And then he whispers words you barely hear, holds on to you so tight it hurts and it scares you sometimes, how close it feels to worship.  Like he’s praying to you.

The fact is, though, you’re losing control.  You don’t have the time to keep him steady, not when you have to go all over the planet every night and travel to other planets every free moment of your time.  Gamzee almost killed another assassin a few days ago and you barely stopped him in time.  And the worst part is that he’s trying to hold back.  You can see it in the tight flinch of his shoulders when he’s taken by surprise, the way he bares his teeth in his sleep.  He’s trying, but the longer he stays here, the harder it becomes.  ( _He’d been perched on the man’s chest, he’d broken both his arms, both his legs.  Just whispering to his would-be assassin, telling him sufferist scriptures with both hands around his throat and then he had looked up at you with his own blood and tears all over his face and for a long, long second, you knew he didn’t know you._ )

( _sufferer, sufferer_ )

Goddammit, and now you’re half awake again and your chest is all tight with pity, you can’t send him back to his room like this.  You scoot back on the couch and tug on him a little bit and he crawls up with you.  He hugs you so tight for a second you can’t breathe, and on a wild pang of pity you nuzzle into his neck and press a kiss to one of the livid needle scars on his throat.  He shivers, bundles you up against his chest and sets his horns awkwardly just so he can rest his chin between your horns and breathe into your hair. 

“ _I dreamed—_ ” he starts, and stops again.  You can feel his hands shake a little as he combs one through your hair. 

He never tells you what he dreamed, but he doesn’t leave either.  You stay awake and worrying until you hear him fall into uneasy sleep, holding on to you like a lifeline.


	3. This Killing Time

Your name is Eridan Ampora, and it is your unfortunate duty to wake up the Second Sufferer.  And also his moirail, who appears to have wandered in here for no reason and gotten on his couch with him in the middle of the day.  (Your auspistice?  Your  _auspistice._   Goddamn.) Kar is pressed back against the back of the couch, sorta caged in on all sides with long skinny arms and legs, with his fingers still wound up in Gam’s hair and his face pressed against one scrawny collarbone.  Shit’s sickeningly romantic.

As is the case with most of your other jobs, nobody wants this job.  Kar tends to wake up all in a rush and angry, and Gam sometimes has these… _moods_  when he’s just waking up with no patch, like real honest-to-god old-fashioned highblood rages.  But they both gotta wake up, and somebody has to do it.  And you’re getting a bonus for it, which really is overkill but hey, the fuck would you complain about that for?  If they want to pay you extra let ‘em, it’s the least you deserve.

You reach down and shake Kar a little bit—he mumbles and bares his fangs sleepily, then makes a little growly sound and buries his face in his moirail’s shoulder and goes still again.  Goddammit.  That’s adorable.

“Kar,” you say, and Gamzee shifts his arm in his sleep, rolling half-over on top of Kar so all you can see of him is his head.  Ugh, seriously? 

You reach out and poke at the back of his head sorta gingerly but definitely not in a timid way at all.  And then poke it again, because his hair is so fine you can barely feel it brushing your finger, holy shit, you take great care of your hair (especially now you can afford the products you want without worrying about Fef freezing or starving) and it hasn’t  _ever_  felt like that.  It’s getting long and his horns are so small it almost covers them.

( _if you rub them will he purr)_

That’s a stupid thought, and you shake it off as soon as you think it, because you’re in  _uniform_ , dammit—you’re at  _work_.

Not that.  Not that it would be an option if you weren’t at work.

This is  _stupid._

“Kar, you gotta wake up.” You poke him again—well.  Really more, sort of, a gentle shaking, patting motion, but you try to wake him up again is the point.  He stirs and unearths a skinny little arm from somewhere in the tangle of limbs to pap his moirail’s shoulder. 

“ _G’zee, no_ ,” he mumbles, and lays a tiny, clumsy kiss on Gamzee’s throat, right over the scars where his collar used to pump drugs into his system.  “… _you need…sleep y’massive disaster, just…_ ” and then he yawns, shows all his precious serrated teeth and settles back in with a noise that is way, way too close to being a full, honest-to-god purr.  You may or may not have a short and really fuckin powerful flashback of Fef holding on to you and crying onto your stitched fins and your insides close up with pity. 

Pity.  For your moirail, not for. 

“…Eridan?”

Oh, he’s awake. 

Karkat yawns again, butts his head against his moirail’s shoulder and blinks up at you.  He looks like a grumpy owl, his hair is down in his eyes, and you feel an absurd rush of affection for him and his tiny horns and pointy teeth and messy hair.  How do you even know him?  How is someone like you  _possibly_  close to the Second Sufferer?  You could even say you’re…friends.  You’re… _friends_  with the Second Sufferer.

“What’s up with you, chum-for-brains?” Karkat is blinking up at you, _almost_  smiling—his mouth is almost a straight line, that’s the happiest you’ve ever seen him.  “I don’t speak fins.”

Oh god you were fluttering at him.  You have just enough dignity and self-control to avoid slapping your hands over your fins, but you can’t avoid the deep purple flush that spreads across your face.  Karkat just rolls his eyes at you. 

“Gamzee.”  He shifts, and then sighs as his moirail growls and holds on a little tighter.   He shoots you a look that is equal parts embarrassed and affronted—you take the hint and turn away from him.  When you glance back guiltily, he’s pulling himself up to whisper in Gamzee’s ear, words you only catch part of. ( _…sleeping…just stay here or…?_    _—ter now?)_ Gamzee mumbles something back and then there’s the sound of springs creaking and you spin back around as Kar yelps out loud. 

Gam has bundled him up to his chest and spun around, swinging his great, long legs over the side of the couch.  Kar isn’t even bothering to struggle, just glaring half-heartedly at you like he’s trying to burn the words ‘ _tell anyone and I’ll rip your bulge off_ ’ on the inside of your skull from pure power of will alone.  Gam grins at you sleepily. 

“Hey, my miraculous brine-blooded brother,” he says, as sweet and dopey as he’s ever been, and for some reason when he says it the insult sounds like a blessing instead. 

“Hey, Gam,” you say—dare to say, if he’s willing to sidle awkwardly into your ashen quadrant maybe it’s okay if you’re  _friends_  too—if you—

“Aww,” he mumbles, and yawns (he yawns more like a meowbeast than any troll you’ve ever seen, all those fangs and his nose wrinkling up) and butts his head against the back of Karkat’s shoulder.  “—hear that bro, like, all, little bits of my name, ain’t that something motherfucking precious?”

“Yeah yeah, Eridan’s the most adorable bodyguard, it’s him.”  Karkat scrubs at his eyes with both fists and then drags his nails down his face, groaning.  He still looks so tired, you really don’t want to get him out of bed at all to be honest and—

—wait, he knows your name?  He’s been calling you Eridan.  This whole time, right? 

“…you mocking my adorabubbleness?”  You try, and  _again_ , he doesn’t tell you off for darin’ to joke with him.  And then, because you’re an idiot and you can never resist gambling when you’re already pushin your luck, “…Kar?”

“Oh, fuck you,” he mumbles, and curls up away from you in Gam’s arms.  “You’re stupid and your hair is fucking stupid.”

“Hey, my hair is fuckin’ awesome—!”  And then you see his shoulders shaking, and you realize he’s laughing at you.  “—oh—oh,  _glub_  you.”

“ _Go pail yourself with your own ugly horns, I am a respected community figure_ ,” he declares blurrily into Gamzee’s shoulder. “—Gamzee we’re going back to bed and ignoring this asshole.  That’s an order.”

“Shoosh,” Gamzee returns, and plunks his head down on top of Kar’s with his chin between his tiny horns.  “Too early in the night to be mad already, come on.”

You are not equipped to deal with this level of sappy paleness in one place.  You’ve been with Fef ever since you were both small, you were never in this place you’ve heard of where you’re just enjoyin’ having somebody around who fits your diamond just right.  It’s flirty and fuzzy and honestly fuckin’ embarrassing to watch.

(Because you’re a terrible person though, you don’t actually stop watching.)

“If you’re done droppin diamonds all over everything,” you say, like the master a tactful communication that you totally are, “—we got affairs to deal with…?  Come on, sir, gotta get you by the emperor’s orders.”

He growls, but struggles upright and slides off of Gam’s lap onto the ground.  He’s so much smaller than you.  Is he ever going to grow any bigger, or is he going to be so small you could pick him up, like, forever? 

“Don’t call me sir,” he says, like an afterthought, and smacks you on the shoulder—you think in a friendly way.  Mostly in a painful way, _oww._   He’s a lot stronger than he looks and it takes you by surprise, especially after witnessin’ all that fuckin’ adorable evening cuddling.  You’ve seen him a lot when he’s angry and yelling and invincible, sure.  But the few moments, like just now, when you see him lookin all small and vulnerable and laughing and joking with you…they sink in a lot more.  “You can mangle my name all you want, I really don’t give a fuck.”

And then he blinks a little and his stare sharpens.

“…wait,” he says slowly, and turns back to his moirail.  Back to you.  Back to Gamzee. 

Your heart is suddenly in your throat.  Of course.  Of course he’d tell his moirail.  It’s kind of important, it’s…like, quadrant-corners, holy shit.  You straighten yourself up and try to look as presentable as possible before he turns back to look at you.  Your collar is crooked, _shit._   “…wait, Gamzee, didn’t you say—?”

“Oh hey, yeah.” Gamzee sidles up and puts a hand on the top of your head—there’s some stupid part of you deep inside that melts a little bit at how proprietary the gesture is, not condescending but holding on good and firm.  It’s ridiculously fuckin’ ashen and your face has to be bright purple.  “…guess I did say somethin’ about, like, me and Aradia and our bro Eridan, uh—”

He trails off, shuffling his feet a little, and you realize suddenly that he’s actually nervous, he wants it to be okay.  You didn’t even know he was  _capable_ of getting nervous about stuff like this, but hell.  With Kar looking at you like that you’re more than nervous, you’re fucking terrified. 

Karkat just watches the two of you for a few more agonizing seconds, and then he nods slowly.  “…you think you can do this?”

Gamzee hesitates, and for a second you can feel his hand on your head trembling just a touch.  You shove that thought out of your head and work at pretending you never noticed it.  You’ve got to be a little bit scared of your ashmate (the middle leaf, anyway, although both is a plus) and dwelling on all his flaws and weak spots are not gonna help you there.  Nobody ever said it was a pity quadrant.

“I’m…gonna try?”  He says finally, and Karkat huffs through his nose and nods.  “…’s fucked up, is all.  Just figure it shouldn’t be happening and it…needs fixed.”

“Well, sounds like the club is willing, even if the thinkpan is weak,” Kar grumbles, and reaches up (on his tiptoes, he’s just so  _wee_ ) to bop his moirail firmly on the forehead.  “Good luck, assmunch.  Let me know when you inevitably fuck up—everyone does,” he adds quickly, when Gam sort of crumples a little bit.  “Auspisticizing is hard.  I’m supposed to help make it easier though, so god help us both.”

“—me too,” you blurt out, about five minutes late.

Both of them look at you.  You stand at attention automatically, which is a defense mechanism that serves you well when you’re working for the most powerful troll in the galaxy and he has every right and reason to pitch you out on the street at any second.  “—I’m gonna do my best too,” you clarify.  “Ain’t gonna get near her without you unless I have to, an’ all.  Uh.  I don’t want…I don’t wanna do that to Sol, no matter what I get in my head to do when I’m there talkin’ to her, so…”

“Good,” says Karkat firmly.  “Welcome to the clade and all that shit.  If either of you breaks anybody’s club, I will break horns.  Got it?”

You both shrink a little bit and nod, and Kar takes pity on you and nods.

“…fine,” he says, and straightens his clothes, not lookin’ at either of you.  “Let’s get going then, before Nitram shows up looking for me in person.”

You walk in silence for a little while.  Kar is still sleepy, and Gam is shuffling along behind him with his head bowed down to rest on his diamond’s head and his arms around those warm little shoulders, draped over him like a big, purple-and-grey blanket.  You pass a few guards on patrol—one you don’t know, but he nods to Kar all respectfully, and you make a show a looking really guard-like too, not like you’re walking around with a quadrant and his moirail.  You, the new kid gives a bit of a weird look on the end of the nod, though.

Then he smiles, and a little lime-green stone glints on his lip.  Your fins prickle all of a sudden, and you half-turn as he carries on his patrol, head down, back straight, as good a guard as you could hope.

“—dan?”

“…mm?”  You say, and then jump when you realize who’s talkin’ to you.  “—oh!  Uh—sorry, sir, yessir, bit distracted.”

“I said, we should get a drink or some shit,” he says again, and you just about piss yourself.

“ _W-what_ ,” you say, and your seadweller stutter comes back for a second.  “Uh—I— _what_?”

“What?” he says back at you, frowning like you’re being stupid.  Gam is watching you both, looking sort of vaguely interested.  “…ash-leaf of my moirail is my—what the fuck, are you okay?”

“Uh?” you say, really bright and clever.

“You just went purple faster than Gamzee when he gets a compromising message from his matesprit,” says Kar dryly.  “…and your fins are—”

“—just an honor, is all,” you say, before he can  _mention_  the fucking fins, and he stares at you.  Oh god, yes, your face is burning, shit, that’s fucking embarrassing.  “Bein’ quadrant-corners with the Second Sufferer, I mean…”

“Me?”  Karkat laughs, and for once it actually sounds real, like he actually finds it funny.  “Yeah right.  Eridan—man, you have to stop doing that thing where you make me into a hero.  I just yell at people to be not total assholes to each other, I’m just as disposable as—”

No that won’t—not going to  _let_  him—he doesn’t—

“You don’t get it, Kar!”  He stops dead as you spin around to face him—Gam’s starin’ at you too, but you ignore him, he’s not important right now.  “—you don’t get what you are for us, do you?  You’re like— _fuck_ , you’re like a fire for us out in the cold, okay?  You’re right off the spectrum and tellin’ us we can be trolls again.  You ain’t  _disposable_ , not to a single one a us, and  _especially not to me_ , so don’t you  _dare_ —!”

But you don’t know what to say to him, so you just stare instead.  You’re kind of panting, your fins are flared up as wide as they’ll go, and you’re. 

Oh.  At some point you grabbed him by the hand.  Probably when you were comparin’ him to a…fire…?  What the fuck did you just say?  You stare at your hands like a moron for about five seconds before you jump and let go.

…but your hand doesn’t drop, because…he’s…still holding on…?

“Hey,” says Karkat, quieter than you’ve ever heard him, still rough and hoarse but almost gentle.  He moves closer to you, shaking off Gamzee’s arms, and leaning away from him to whisper to you—Gam makes a sad noise when he’s forced to stop being draped over his moirail. “—Are you—?”

And then there’s a sharp  _crack_ , and Kar’s hand rips outta yours.  He makes a soft little noise, and he…he just… _falls._

—

Your name is Karkat Vantas and—

—hurts—

—on your hands, bright red, so fucking—

—bright, what’s…

—hurts—

—

Karkat gasps and then falls back, limp.  Gamzee dives down and catches him before he can crack his head on the ground, but Karkat just hacks a dry, painful cough and makes the smallest, saddest noise you have ever heard.  And then his eyes roll back in his head and he goes still.

“Karkat— _Karkat!_ ” Gamzee shakes him, not gentle—Kar just flops in his hands like a doll,  _like a corpse no shut up no this can’t be right no_ —and the noise Gamzee makes is horrible, this rising, tearing, cracking  _howl_  of fury.  He leaves Karkat on the ground, flows upright in a jagged whiplash of a movement with eyes the color of fire and murder in his snapping fangs and for that all-important second your instincts as an imperial guard take over.  He’s gonna kill the shooter.  The shooter has to be put on trial.  The shooter has to survive.  You have to stop him.

He starts to lunge past you with a noise like somethin’ out of a nightmare, and you pull back an arm, haul him back around, line up and punch him hard in the face.  He staggers but doesn’t go down, doesn’t snap out of it either; he bares all his teeth at you— _holy fuck so many teeth oh god—_ and lets out a wordless scream that makes every hair on your body stand on end and then he goes to rush past you again and you wind up and hit him so hard he goes off his feet and  _cracks_  onto the ground.

He lies all kinda broken next to his moirail and doesn’t get back up again, but you don’t stop to watch him.  You sprint after the shooter ( _long legs better lungs better vision better claws and fangs the best hunters like sharks in the ocean_ ) you snag the kid by the back of his shirt and slam him flat on the ground so hard something in him cracks. 

Grab a horn, catch a glint of lime green and crush his head back down  _crack crack crunch_  unconscious and you pitch the body against the wall and stumble back to kneel next to where Kar fell.

He’s conscious, barely.  Your hands are trembling so bad, there’s amazing fiery red blood all over everything and he’s gaspin’.  Holding his side.  Your hands hover over him and shake and everything in your head is just gone—you don’t know  _what to do_.

Karkat groans and starts to roll over, and he makes these terrible little noises, so quiet and sad and hurting you almost puke.  He always looked invincible, even though he was so small.  Now he just looks scared.  You have to cover up those noises, you’re a coward and it’s fuckin’ sickening but those little sounds scare you more than the blood—you yell out for help into the dark and somewhere above you, there are footsteps.  But Captor would be on this already, wouldn’t he?  He’s got eyes everywhere.  You would bet he had people running before Kar hit the ground.

“— _wh…._ ”

“Hold still, don’t—don’t move, I—y-you been shot, it’s not—” You’re babbling, useless.  He lifts his head up a little and looks down at himself—bares his teeth.  They’re all stained red on the insides, burning, unreal red.  You watch a trickle of it well up at the corner of his mouth and down his cheek like you’ve been frozen solid, gaping. The color is so fucking beautiful and he’s gonna die and you can’t move, you’re gonna be sick.

“ _Ugly…f’cking…color_ ,” he chokes, and flops back again like he can’t hold himself up.  Reaches for you.  You take his wandering hand in one of yours and he’s cooler than he should be—

He shakes your hand off with an impatient snarl and grabs a hold of your jacket instead.  “ _Off,_ ” he rasps at you, and you blink for a second before he snaps his fangs at you and you tug off your jacket.  He bundles it up—presses it to his bleeding stomach, hard, with an aching groan.  “— _keep me awake_ ,” he chokes, and coughs hard, spasming.  “— _talk—to me—_ ”

Right.  Right, yes, you know this shit, okay.  You don’t know what to say.  But you can always talk, you  _know_ how to talk.  Okay.  Okay.  ( _Oh god Gam’s gonna kill you when he wakes up, oh shit._ )

“I’m really glad you don’t have a matesprit,” you blurt out, like a total moron, and then bite down on “— _they’d probably murder me and I have no idea how I would be a bodyguard for you and two other quadrants at the same time_ —” before it can come out, because Kar is staring at you like you’ve grown a second head.  He’s putting all of his effort into breathing, you’re not sure he’s even physically capable of talking right now, but you can see it in his eyes  _what the fuck are you talking about, Ampora_?

“If you did, shit would get complicated—!” you cut yourself off with a laugh, but it sounds hysterical.  “—I mean—!  Sorry, uh, I’ll—what should I talk about—?”

“ _No_ ,” he rasps, and gives another hacking cough.  “—keep…talking… _plumb the sordid depths.  Can’t—die ‘n the middle of…something like…_ ” he leans back for a few seconds, closing his eyes, wheezing softly.  It bubbles in the back of his throat. (The blood is dripping down the side of his neck now, when it soaks into the leg of your uniform it feels scalding-hot.)  “…flushed… _then_?”

 _Oh_.   _Fuck._

You almost blurt out ‘no!’ without a second thought, you’re so taken off guard.  But then you notice the spark of interest in his eyes, and you hesitate.  That would keep him awake for sure, right?  Ain’t hard, pretending to be flushed for someone.  You think.  You’ve liked people before, anyway, even if you’ve never really…acted on it.  It comes from sort of the same spot right down in your thorax as the way you feel about Fef, but a lot less warm and fuzzy and a lot more sharp and hot.

“Maybe a little,” you say slowly, and he snorts and then winces and resettles the cloth against the bullet hole.  You offer him your most charming smile—it feels strained and fake, but he rolls his eyes at you anyway.  “…why, you offerin’?”

“Pssshhh,” he goes, and squeezes his eyes shut.  Opens ‘em again.  They won’t quite focus on your face.  The jacket is soaking up way too much blood.  He echoes it back at you in a sleepy murmur, “… _maybe a little_.”

“You’re mockin’ my sincere regards.”  He doesn’t answer.  You give his face half a slap and he jolts and opens his eyes again.  “ _Kar._ ”

“ _Yeah_.”  Deep breath.  In, out, more bubbling, more blood.  The bullet went in high and left—must’ve hit a thoracic aeration sac, he’s lucky it wasn’t any higher or he’d…already be… “Still awake.  I’m… _still awake._    _Keep talking._ ”

Keep talking.  Keep talking?  About what?  You put your hand over his on his stomach and help him push down on the wound and he moans and it’s horrible but he can’t afford to lose any more blood.

Uhhhh come on, if you were entertainin’ shit of a pityin’ nature towards him, what would you say?  What would you pity?

“…you look real cute when I come to wake you up, y’know,” you tell him, and he snorts and arches his neck, tipping his head back.  You can see the tendons taut in his throat when he swallows a groan.  “And I get to see it, and I’m…I’m real glad about that, but watchin’ you tear yourself up like y’do…kinda makes a guy want to protect—” and then you have to stop, because you  _didn’t_  protect him, you _couldn’t_ , you fucked up.  Kar seems to know what it is you’ve gotten caught up thinkin’ about, because he sighs, low and long. 

“ _I don’t want people fucking protecting me_ ,” he says, very quietly.  “… _I_  want to protect  _you_.  All of you.”  His eyes fix on your face.  “ _…especially…_ ” he mumbles, and then trails off and shakes his head aimlessly.  “…nnh… _never…mind…_ tell you later—”

“KK!”

Sollux is there in a storm of red and blue light, and you manage to keep yourself from droppin’ Kar and jumpin’ to your feet just because he feels so  _little_  but so warm and heavy in your arms.  He gurgles out another coughing laugh and waves a hand at Sol; he’s scarlet to the wrists.

“ _…hey_ ,” he says, in this tiny, tiny voice that is just so  _wrong_ , he shouldn’t be so quiet.  “… _got shot._ ”

“I know—I know you did, holy fuck, KK—” Sollux drops down across from you, hands fluttering around like he’s scared to touch, sparking on every inch of him.  “Who—?”

“I got the shooter,”  you say, and your voice is rough with growling at the thought.  Sollux jumps, like he’s only just noticing you’re there.  “Over there.  Didn’t get a good look, but they’re…they’re not goin’ anywhere.”

The medics Sollux brought with him get down with you and you have to fight the stupid impulse to growl at them and pull Kar closer.  You’ve held him this long, your nerves are all on fire and protectiveness is prickling through you from somewhere deep and old in your pan.  But you let them have him, and they immediately get to work, slathering stuff into the wound and putting on masks and cleaner cloth than your soaked jacket. 

You stand up—your knees are trembling like you’re a wiggler learning to walk, the fuck is wrong with you—and Sol comes up beside you and grabs you by the arm.  You couldn’t fall over if you wanted to.  (Which honestly you kinda do.)

And then you remember something and jerk away from him again on another jolt of adrenaline.  Sol goes after you, thinking you’re falling over, probably, but you wave him off and drop down next to Gamzee, sprawled out flat on the ground.  You’re not planning to wait for him to wake up; you’ve met enough wild purples with no sopor and a grudge to know how that goes and you can already feel a weird, tingly ache at the bases of your horns and in the sensory nodes around your fins.  You’re lucky he was so focused on the shooter and not on you or you never would have decked him like that. 

You cuff his wrists numbly—then, on an afterthought, decaptchalogue your extras and get his legs too, moving on autopilot and ignoring Sol’s confused questions.  As a last precaution you make sure you tug up his sleeve and smack two sopor patches onto the inside of one arm, where the skin is thin and soft and it’ll hit him hard .  The weird, high tingle at the edge on all your senses eases off a little bit.  He quiets.  He’s shaking in his sleep, mumbling something you can’t hear—you can’t bear to try to listen closer because you would bet even odds he’s whispering threats or crying for his moirail, and the thought of either one makes you fill up inside with that weird, hot, angry unhappiness. 

“…okay,” says Sollux, mock-patiently, when you finally straighten up again.  “Are you going to explain what the fuck you think you’re doing now? And  _don’t_  tell me GZ was working with the shooter, he would never—”

“Fuck no.”  don’t think about it, don’t think about the bright red stains on the ground, on your hands, your shirt.  “…when he saw Kar go down, he…he just…” you make a sharp, vague gesture in the air—Sol winces. 

“…snapped?”  He offers.  You consider, then nod.  Sol rubs his forehead like he’s got a headache (his hands are shaking.)  “Shit.  Shit,  _shit_.  This is all my fault.”

“What?”  He shoulda seen it coming, sure, but it happens.  People get in.  He can’t literally watch every single part of the palace at once, it’s impossible.  “Why?”

“I could have caught this guy!”

“Yeah, well, you can’t catch everyone, Sol, even at your most hardass—”

“I wasn’t even  _watching_!” 

His eyes are sparking all over the place, the spots of light where his pupils would be are tiny, brilliant little glittering points and you stare at them instead of watching your kismesis fallin’ apart right at the fuckin’ seams.  The arm that’s closer to him stings and prickles and the sensors in your fins shriek at you  _move the fuck away_ but you just stare at his eyes and don’t move.  There’s blood on your hands.  You can feel it still cooling.  You can hear Kar grunting in pain behind you, and then a horrible whimper when they say “—going to have to move you, Sufferer—” and you and Sol both flinch. 

You’re going to your moirail.  You need your moirail.

…but Sol doesn’t have one, and you can see something stupid and dangerous and crazy brewing behind his eyes (who ever said coldbloods where the only ones who were dangerous and unstable, they were fuckin’ stupid) and he doesn’t have someone to keep him from doing anything that’ll—

“…You,” you say, real slow and quiet.  “…you got that legislacer—fuck.  Lawyer.  You got that lawyer Pyrope here, right.”

He jumps way more than he should, but he’s on edge.  Distracts him a little, at least.

“…you knew?”

“Ain’t hard to find out she’s hangin’ around, Sol,” you say, all sarcastic, and he snarls with all his uneven crooked teeth at you.  “Dunno what she’s here for if that’s what you’re worried about, figured it ain’t my place to pry at imperial—“ you’re gettin’ sidetracked.  “—go find her.  Let her know what just went down.”

“Why the fuck should I?!”

Because you come away from your meetings with her looking about half as neurotic as usual and don’t even spark when I make fun of your stupid horns.

“Because if you figure you fucked up that bad,” you say instead, “—you got a lot of ground to cover, right?”

It’s a low blow, but you’re his fuckin’ kismesis.  What other kind of blow would you ever take?  It don’t make that much sense, either, but you know him well enough to know that it doesn’t really have to.  He’ll take any excuse to beat on himself.  Sucks to put him in that spot where he’s so down on himself he doesn’t want to fight you—but you just gotta hold onto that foggy sort of happiness he’s got after he spends some time bitching with that tealblood…and hope.

Sol slumps.

“…yeah,” he says, and he might as well be showin’ you his throat, he’s that weak for a second.  You hate it.  “… _yeah,_ I’ll…you’re right.  I’ll go…fuck.  I’ll go take care of it.”

—

TZ is in her rooms, not her office.  You know she’s going to be.  It’s too early in the night for her to be working, even her.  She looks up when you come in—she doesn’t have to, she only does it because you asked her to and you hate yourself for making her accommodate you like a selfish asshole. 

“KK got fucking shot,” you blurt out, and she sits up really straight and stares at you.  She takes a big whiff of you. 

“Oh  _fuck_ ,” she says, very delicately, and lays down her pen.   There’s a couple seconds of silence while she thinks that over, and you hunch down and wait for her to blame her for it.  TZ is smart, she’ll see this is your fault. 

“…is he alive?”

You nod.

“Is he likely to stay that way?”

They said they would be able to pull him out of it, but she’s not _getting_  it, you know because she’s not yelling at you. 

“Well…” you say.  “…yeah, but—”

“Alright,” she says, over top of you.  “Then all that remains is that we find out who performed the crime, and why, and then—”

You fucking snap.

“ _Why_?”  You repeat, “WHY?!  Because of  _me_ , that’s fucking why!”

She blinks at you, a flicker of movement behind the tinted glass lenses of her glasses.  “…what?”  she says.  “You are not making sense, Appleberry, explain yourself.”

You’re not listening—it’s too important that she knows, that she understands what a piece of shit you are and why this is your fault _all your fault—_ “—everyone I get close to, all of you are fuckin’ _doomed,”_ you’re shouting over her before she’s even done talking, “—I’ve done the math TZ it’s me I’m the connection you’re all getting hurt because I—”

“Mr. Captor,” she says, but you’re sparking and out of control and _angry_ , so angry, how  _dare_ they why did you ever let someone get close to you—?! “ _Sollux!_ ”

You aren’t listening, you barely even realized she was in the room—which is why it comes as such a shock when she grabs you by the shoulder, pulls you around, and slaps you hard in the face.

You reel, panting and staring at her.  She doesn’t apologize.

“Sollux,” she repeats, and she reaches out again, wincing but not pulling away when your psionics jolt her, and puts her hands firmly on either side of your face.  “You cannot go and see him.  Not right now.”

It’s so hard to think straight with her holding on to you like that, her thumb is moving just a little bit across your cheek and all your thoughts have gone distant and far away.  “Wh…what?  Why—?”

“For one thing, he is on a number of delicate machines and they would not take your psionic interference very well,” she says dryly, and twitches again as your sparks dance up her arms.  You pull them back into yourself, a little at a time, and she relaxes.  She doesn’t let go.  “…for another thing, I think you know what he would say to you if he found out that the first thing you did after someone attempted to assassinate him was to go sprinting across the now mostly-unsupervised palace and go visit him?”

You stare at her, still struggling to breathe, and she’s  _still_  holding on to your face. 

“He…he would…”

She doesn’t jump in or finish the sentence for you.  She just sits back, holds on to you, and lets you piece it together for yourself.

“…he would tell me I was being an idiot,” you decide eventually, and it hurts to say because when you say it out loud you know it’s true and you know he wouldn’t want you there with him.  “…the diseased…fucking…” you stall a little.  “…I have no idea how he comes up with that stuff,” you tell her, slightly plaintively, and she laughs, more softly than normal, and squeezes your face in her hands.  “…TZ—Terezi, I—”

“Fallibility is not a sin, Sollux,” she tells you, very firmly.  “…running off half-cocked and getting people killed is not a sin either.  I do not actually believe in sins.  But it is a stupid,  _stupid_  idea, and I would take you to court for it.”

You don’t know what to say.  You just mouth at her silently instead, and she holds on to your face and smiles at you with all her perfect white teeth, and something inside you that you thought you gave up on sparks back into life. 

Then she jumps, lets go of you and turns away.  You can  _see_  her ears going teal, though, and you stay where she left you and grin at her back like a moron for a few seconds before you remember why she just had to talk you down.  Your smile falls right off your face.

“We have to work on finding out who sent that shooter,” you say, and your mind is clear again, full of rage but  _focused_.  Terezi is half-turned back towards you, listening.  “I need guards set up around the perimeter, if they went after Karkat they’ll go after Tavros.”

“They’ll go after you, too,” Terezi points out.  You shrug, and she spins around, draws back both hands and  _smacks_  you—hard and on both cheeks. 

“— _son of a bitch_ ,” you croak, and double over, holding your burning face.  “Holy  _fuck_ — _ow—_ ”

“Sollux!”  Terezi snaps, and this is the first time you have really heard her sound  _pissed_.  “We  _can not afford_  to get you shot!  You may have dismal self-esteem, but surely you must understand how _hopelessly fucked_  we would be without you!  You are the chief of surveillance!  You are a world-class psionic, you are in the confidence of the emperor, you need to  _preserve yourself._ ”

“But—ow!   _God,_ TZ!”

“I want to hear you say it!”

“Say what?!”

“Sollux,” she says, vicious in her gentleness.  “ _Value yourself._ ”

It takes the breath right out of you. 

Terezi stares at you with blank, red eyes as you struggle to breathe and not run the fuck away from that deadly-sharp look.  And then, slowly, she slumps.

“…I believe I have overstepped my boundaries,” she says quietly, and as she turns away your hand closes on her lapel and doesn’t let go.  She turns back, surprised—you stare at your hand, equally surprised.  Look up at her.  Back at your hand.  Make a tiny, confused little noise. 

She comes forward and hugs you, and you hold out for a long second and then, slowly, you let her.

—

Your name is Terezi Pyrope, and you have a date later. 

This is a pleasant, totally unexpected, and completely terrifying eventuality.  You have never had a date before.  You’ve been building your reputation as legal council, you’ve been taking cases and working long days, you’ve been beating the shit out of various people who aren’t happy you got their quadrant-mates imprisoned or worse, but you’ve never had a chance to really… _meet_  anybody.

You are giddy.  You are terrified. 

But for now, you are also professional.  You are back on case business, and not feeling fluttery and stupid and young inside about a  self-destructive yellowblood who rocked back and forth in your arms and took shuddering breaths into your hair—

“Authorization.”

You jump a little, and realize suddenly that while you were thinking you arrived at your destination.  A pair of guards in neutral palace uniform watch you with equally neutral expressions.  You can smell the barest hint of color under their skin—a rustblood and a cerulean.  Interesting choice.  Well the emperor always did make a point out of not discriminating. 

“Authorization white,” you tell them crisply, “…five-c-r-four-seven-c-h-zero-zero.”

They glance at each other, cross-checking (excellent, you love working with efficient organizations), and then look back at you and step smartly out of the way.  The door they’re guarding clicks open.

Gamzee is awake and quiet when you walk through the door, and the first thing you smell is overwhelming  _purple_ -ness and a simmering current of spicy rage.  Anyone who was looking at him with their eyes would probably be fooled—what you can make out of his physical appearance is still and quiet, hands still cuffed behind his back and now chained to the wall, eyes hooded and almost sleepy.  But the rage is there, boiling under the surface, making your eyes water and your nose itch.

“Mr. Makara,” you say, and he makes a quiet, almost peaceful sound of acknowledgement.  Just your presence in the room has his hands twitching behind his back though, and although your ears are not as good as your nose, you think you can hear the faintest hum of a growl, deep in his chest.  You give him about a second and a half to get to the middle of whatever thought he’s having, and then say, “…no, you shouldn’t do that.”

He jumps and stares at you with furious suspicious and you know it worked.  You love that trick.  Whatever he was thinking, it was obviously not pleasant.

“Bloodshed is never as cathartic as one is hoping it will be,” you sigh, and settle down across from him, far enough away that he can’t get to you.

“ _Uncuff me_ ,” he says.

“I’m here to talk to you about—” 

“ _Uncuff me._ ”

“You have a very one-track mind, don’t you?”

“Un.  Fucking.   _Cuff me._ ”

“You realize,” you point out, “—that the phrasing you just used makes it sound as though you are asking me to double-cuff—”

He lets out a great, frustrated roar of a snarl and tugs hard on the cuffs.  You recall suddenly that you should be professional about this.  You didn’t even plan to come in and wind him up—it’s so aggravating smelling his rage under the surface and knowing that nobody else can  _see_  it.  You settle your hands on your knees, take a deep breath, and pull yourself back to professional deadpan.

“…I’m here to talk to you about your moirail,” you say, and—

…and he  _changes_.  Everything about him, in the space of a second.  His eyes go wide, his face pales, and that burning current of rage snaps and twists and becomes pouring rivers of urgent anguish.  He forgets about trying to escape, about being angry with you.  He leans forward on his chains so hard he must be hurting his wrists, but he doesn’t seem to notice the awkward, painful angle of his arms or the way the cuffs are digging into his skin.

“ _Karkat_?”  There is raw desperation in his voice, in every straining inch of him.  “Is he—I mean—fuck—what happened—?!”

“Eridan Ampora punched you in the face,” you say wryly, “…so that the shooter could be captured  _alive_  and interrogated for further information on who’s organizing this.  He kept pressure on Mr. Cherry Vantas’s wound and helped him stay awake until the mediculler team arrived and efficiently began taking life-saving measures.”  He’s still staring at you, drawn tight as a bowstring—you sigh.  “…Karkat Vantas is hospitalized and unconscious,” you tell him plainly.   “—but alive.  And likely to stay that way.”

He collapses back against the wall with a sound that reminds you of the noise a troll makes when they’re stabbed—a breathless little  _hff_ of air, almost a sob.  You smell sweet grape jelly before he mumbles “ _…fuck…_ ” and twists to scrub his cheek against one shoulder, wiping the smell away.  “ _—oh god, fuck, thank you, thank you thank you…_ ”

“I’m not god,” you point out wryly, half a joke, and he glances up at you and almost smiles.

“ _Wasn’t talking to you_ ,” he rasps, and sniffs hard.  He can’t hide his face from you behind his hands, so he just pulls his knees up to his chest and drops his head onto them.

You sit there and listen to him breathe for a while. 

“…I did not just come down here to give you an update on your moirail, Mr. Makara,” you say, and he looks up at you, suddenly curious.  Another purple tear slips down his cheek—he crooks his shoulder up and scrubs his face against it.  “I have a few questions to ask you as well.”

He hesitates, but he nods. “…can do that,” he says, quietly, much calmer than before you gave him the news about Karkat.  That’s…good.  Yes, that’s good.  You’re not entirely sure why your thoughts caught on that for a moment.  Of course it’s good that he’s calmed down.  There’s still a sharpness to him that you don’t like ( _dangerous_ , your instincts chime in softly,  _very dangerous_ ) but it’s much, much quieter.

The fact that you can still smell it, hiding away under the surface, makes your teeth want to grind.

“I wanted to know whether you knew anyone who might have had a grudge against Mr. Vantas,” you push, and his shoulders go tense, his bowed head jerks in a silent laugh.

“Yeah,” he says slowly, and the sudden spark of red-hot anger makes your eyes water and burn.  “…yeah, I motherfucking  _do._ ”

—

Vriska Serket. 

You watch her through one-sided glass.  You’ve heard of Vriska Serket, of course, and you are well-apprised of her role in the story of the Emperor, the Second Sufferer, and his moirail.  You did your research, and you have…well, if not seen, then at least you have smelled and tasted pictures of her, which you would say is at least as good. 

She looks considerably more well-fed than in the pictures you’d found of her, though, and considerably more well-dressed.  Her hair, which was long enough to reach to her waist, is chopped off roughly in the back and she has a few new scars.  She smells like confidence and strength, and…anger.  She smells significantly pissed off.  The other significant smell is the purple of the looped symbol tattooed on the back of her hand.  Of course she would have no choice but to come.  If she didn’t, she would be an imperial lawbreaker, defying her owner.

Her owner is standing next to you.  You’ve made sure he was at least as well-dressed as he’s ever been—you can’t make him any less likely to blunder off and wreck things by running his mouth off, and you can’t keep him under control ( _Mr. Cherry Sufferer, where oh where can you be?_ ) but you can at least make him look slightly more respectable.  He’s looking at Serket with an expression that wavers, moment to moment, from anger to fear to confusion and uncertainty and back again to anger. 

“She would have motive,” you conceded, and he growls low in his thorax, a great, low rumble that is surprisingly loud and deep for his skinny frame.  “Alright, Mr. Makara, this is how we will—”

You look over, take a sniff, and realize that the door is clicking shut.

Gamzee is advancing into the room when you slip in through the door behind him, and you smell Vriska’s sudden interest.  And her anger.  Her anger is a sudden thread of vicious electric blue on her breath and in her eyes.  She leans back in her chair and watches him stalk closer—she notices you, but you’re nothing to her at this point.  You don’t hold her attention compared to Gamzee right now.

“Hello,  _Makara_ ,” she says, and the word is like an attack.  “ _Fancy_ meeting you here.”

Gamzee bristles in such a way that you can definitely tell he took the words in the spirit they were meant.  He smells about ready to go for her throat.  You’re about to step in, but…

…but the suspect is leaning back, would-be casual, cocky and angry, and she’s looking for a fight so she can get in some really nasty jabs, and Gamzee looks about ready to give her one.  You can  _use_ this. 

You step back.

“So,” says Vriska, “—how can I serve the emp—”

“ _Bitch_.”

Vriska stops.  You can almost smell her shock and confusion.  This is not the Gamzee she knew when she was selling him out—no, she would have been very prudent with her drugs, wouldn’t she?  She would never have allowed him to be sober unless he was carefully restrained.

He’s not restrained now. 

“Talk me in circles,” says Gamzee, cold and shaky, “— _and I’ll fucking kill you_ , I do not HAVE.  THE.  FUCKING.   _PATIENCE._ ”

“You look like shit,” says Vriska, but it’s not quite the same kind of tone as it was before.  She’s taken aback and trying to figure out her next step.  “No, seriously, what the hell am I doing here, Makara.”

“We have some questions for you,” you say, quiet and sharp, and Vriska’s eyes flicker back to you, confused and…almost offended?  It’s like she’s…

…oh no.  Oh dear god, does she think she’s  _pitch-flirting_  with him? 

“My—” Gamzee starts to say, and you pull him back and step in front of him with sharp efficiency.  When he tries to resist, you bring your cane down, inconspicuously but with great force, on one of his skinny bare feet. 

“We had a recent assassination attempt,” you say, over his muffled cursing.  “You should know, by the way, that this is classified, and if it is found that the information has been released it will be assumed that you are responsible and you may very well be sentenced to death.”

Yet again, Vriska smells taken aback.   She has yet to realize the full scale of the mess she’s been dragged into. That’s good—that will keep her on her guard. 

It’s at that moment, however, that Gamzee gets tired of waiting and shoulders past you again.  “Who shot my moirail,” he says.

Well, that’s that meowbeast out of the meowbeast-containing device.  You smell your suspect’s eyes widen, then narrow in the twitch of a smile that you can’t quite interpret, then she returns to her vague, sharp smile, letting go of nothing.  But her surprise was a strong jolt to your nose for just a split second.  Either she did not know that Vantas was shot, or she wasn’t expecting him to come out and say it to her face. 

“Uhhh,” she says, with exaggerated slowness, “…I don’t… _know…_?  I’ve been out hunting down some blueblood bitch who pissed off the empire, remember?  It’s what you told them to do with me when you were too much of a coward to lock me up or actually, y’know,  _take responsibility_  for  _this._ ”  She holds up her marked hand; Gamzee’s sign is a dark swirl against her silvery, scarred skin.  And then her eyes widen theatrically.  “Wait, what, you think  _I_  had something to do with this?”  She stares at him for a split second, and when his face doesn’t change she lolls back in her seat and scoffs.  “Oh  _honestly_ , sopor really does rot your brain!  Why the fuck would I try to kill him?”

Gamzee’s hands slam down on the arms of her chair so hard it cracks. 

“ _Do not._ FUCK WITH ME.   _Motherfucker._ ”

“Then don’t flirt so loud,” says Vriska flippantly, and pretends her fingers aren’t twitching for a weapon.  You can smell the confusion and the anger roiling off Gamzee like a fog, smell the pheromones and disgust coming off Vriska in waves and he still hasn’t leaned away from her.  “See, you’re not complicated, Makara, you  _liked_ your job.  It felt good, right?  That’s what you always told me,  _it makes me feel good, sis!_ ” she puts on a dopey drawl and the insult is made worse by how close she manages to make it.  Gamzee’s ears flatten and a growl rumbles in his chest.  “…you like fucking people, I liked getting you people to fuck, but hell, if you hate me so much—”

“ _You did me wrong_ ,” Gamzee hisses.  “Even as I didn’t know it, motherfucker, you  _used_  me.  My blood  _doesn’t fucking forgive_.”  Your head pounds.  Is she doing something to you?  No, they put psionic suppressors on psychics when they arrest them, she can’t be, and besides she’s not ( _breathing_   _fast, hard breaths, claws splintering wood, a snarl on every exhale his shoulders are hard like bones and his fangs are clumsy shards of white and purple where he’s biting through his lips instead of tearing out her throat DEATH HAS A HAND ON YOUR SHOULDER_ )

You come back to yourself with a gasp that makes you choke and cough, and find that you’ve slumped back against the wall, breathing hard, lost in the scents in front of you and the… _whatever_ this is…that he’s doing to your brain.    Vriska doesn’t even seem to notice it—but yes, of course.  There’s no damping a psychic’s power without making them immune to outside intrusion as well.  Call it a whim of the universe, that if you want to invade someone’s mind, you have to give them their own powers back to do it.  (Justice is an in-built function of the universe, and this fact goes into your ever-increasing case to prove this as empirical truth.)

“Your  _blood_.”  Vriska repeats, and the scorn in the word is practically a scent of its own.  “Come on, your blood is shit and we both know it!  All it ever got you was sweeps of sleeping in the trash and a head full of fucked-up murder-voices that you literally _begged_ me to drug out of you.  And now after perigees of living soft up here in the palace you’re seriously trying to tell me that you suddenly pulled your ‘highblood pride’ out of your nook and dragged me up here for payback?!  Bullshit.” 

She leans in, almost conspiratorial, and her voice lowers to almost a purr.  “…you don’t like me, Gamzee.  And I don’t think you really believe that I was behind this at all, do you?  So why did you bring me here, just to let me know how  _angry_  you are with me?”  She smirks, leans forward another few inches, and their faces are breaths apart.  “… _you horrible piece of shit,_ ” she snarls, sudden and low, “— _how_ dare _you get luckier than me?_ ”

Oh god, yes, yes she does think she’s pitch-flirting with him.  But at least you can be sure that no matter what she thinks is going on, Gamzee isn’t going to—

Gamzee bares all his teeth and snarls, and his voice is so mangled by his growl it’s like you’re listening to a terrible romance vid, it’s like a cheesy cliché.  “ _I’m tryin’ to be_ better _,_ ” he hisses.  “ _Why shouldn’t good come at me for once_?”

“Because you’re  _trash_ ,” Vriska responds easily, and it’s even more of an insult for how she says it; simple, matter-of-fact, like she’s stating the color of the sky.  “The shit of the streets.  We’ve discussed this, remember?”

If you have to step in to auspiticize between these two absolute morons, you are never going to forgive yourself.  You consider at least clearing your throat—they seem to have forgotten that you’re there for the moment—but Gamzee lets out a harsh bark of a laugh, so far removed even from the anxious, angry personality you’ve seen so far, you have trouble believing he’s the same troll.  You can see the muscle standing out at the corner of his jaw where he’s clenching his teeth  like he’s imagining biting through her throat. 

“If you dare to try taking fucking  _ownership_  of another troll, just because you have the means to,” he says, and you have a very deep suspicion by the tone of his voice, the sudden, subtle change of the pitch, that he’s quoting scripture.  “You’re the problem.  You’re the one who deserves punishment. If you have any faith in all this shit I’ve been saying,  _listen to me_ ;  _no troll should own another troll._ I got rules I live by, they kept me from taking out on you all the shit you did when I didn’t know better, but  _sister_ —” he leans down, bracing himself on the arms of her chair, almost affectionate all of a sudden.  “… _there’s nothin’ in my rules about ripping you limb from motherfucking limb in a fair fight._ ”

“ _Well you do own me_ ,” Vriska hisses back, venomous.  “ _So_ what good are your rules,  _Makara_.  Go on.   _Order_ me to tell you.  Act your color,  _highblood._ ”

Gamzee twitches and then, abruptly, he stills.  He raises one hand, and Vriska leans into it, baring her teeth as he wraps it slowly, almost gently, around her throat.  You can smell the wet, white gleam of her fangs and you’re not sure whether she wants to kiss or bite but it doesn’t matter because he’s nose to nose and you can _smell_  it, the moment of wavering interest, the thin, sharp thread of cold lust in the air.

And then Gamzee huffs out a hard sigh and pulls away.

“I got a mighty deal of dislike for you,” he tells her, and your bile sack clenches for a moment before he plants a hand on her shoulder and pushes himself up with a sharp, painful shove.  She yelps and then growls.  “… _but you lost me and you’re not gettin’ me back.  Not like that.  Not ever._ ”

He starts to turn away—you catch a clearer whiff of his face; he’s very pale, he smells like tension and worry and anger and rotting grapes.  You’ve seen him wobbling further and further out of alignment over the past night and a half.

If Karkat doesn’t wake up you have no idea what you’re going to do.

“Oh, whatever,” Vriska snaps, and for the first time there is no hint of guarded care in her voice or in her face.  She smells shocked and affronted and furiously frustrated.  “You’re still so  _lame_ , you giant, brainless whore!  Goddammit, I wish I  _did_  get him shot, maybe you’d stop being such a wet rag all the time without  _Karkat_  leading you around by the horns!”

And as far as you are concerned, you think as Gamzee shoulders past you so hard he almost knocks you over, vanishing out into the dark palace…as far as you are concerned, that is your testimony.  Given without thinking and in anger, with a seed of pitch hatred in it.  You have very little doubt that that is the truth.   Vriska Serket did not have Karkat Vantas shot.  So the only question that remains is the one you started out with in the first place. 

An aggravating setback, but even this setback is a blessing in disguise, you are sure.  Evidence, acquired.  A confession (or lack thereof) attained.

But now is not the time to keep pursuing Karkat’s shooter.  You have a bigger fish to fry, right this second. 

And besides, you have a date.

You’re about to leave when a thought occurs to you—you turn back to Vriska, who’s sitting slumped in a sulky morass of grey.  “By the way,” you say, and she jumps and glares up at you like Gamzee’s open rejection of her clumsy pitch advances was your fault.  “I looked at your records under the employment of the empire.  Impressive killcount, Ms. Serket.”

She can’t help it—she preens a little at that.  Some of the slump goes out of her shoulders.  Vain people are far, far too easy.  When she speaks, however, her voice is just as bitter and angry as ever.  “Better killcount than a… _legislacerator_.”  She spits the word.  “I don’t need you to patronize me when you spend all day in courtrooms pailing yourself to sheets of legal terms or whatever the fuck you do.”

Oh, that is somewhat infuriating.  Mostly though, it’s just amusing.  You are considerably amused.

“Actually, I did compare the numbers,” you say blithely, instead of rising to the taunt.  “And if you wish to do the same, Ms. Serket— _Terezi Pyrope_ , by the way, you’ll need the name for access—you’ll find that including all imprisonments and penalties, my count is almost four times higher than yours.  And, of course, that I don’t have a count of slavery on my record.  Do not dismiss us just because some of our battles are with words instead of weapons.” You walk for the door, and feel her staring at your back, narrowed eyes, not sure whether to believe you or not.  You stop in the doorway, planting your cane and turning in the way that makes your long coat swirl behind you in a flash of black cloth and scarlet lining.  “…food for thought, Ms. Blueberry Swirl,” you say, and make your exit.

—

One more day until the trial.

Terezi refuses to work anymore.  She says that she never works the day before the trial (. _..I must have time to settle my case, Mr. App_ …Sollux).  Instead she smiles at you, shuffles all of her papers, picks out the ones that are apparently the most vitally important, and puts them neatly into a little folder.  The folder goes in a portable document box.  The portable document boxgoes with her. 

“It does not leave my side,” she explains, and shows you the box; dark leather with a neat, gleaming handle and an almost invisible keyhole.  The outside is padded and soft.  “…it is also excellent for sleeping on.  You would be amazed how hard it is for even the most talented thief to steal your documents, Mr. Captor, when they are underneath you.”  And then she picks up all the other papers, bundles them up, puts them in a little matte-black steel refuse receptacle and, without any ceremony whatsoever, sets fire to them.

You watch the notes burn away, and TZ keeps flattening and burning, flattening and burning until there is no chance in hell there’s even a single scrap of paper left unburned and legible.  ( _She told you stories about herself, awkward at first and then smoother and faster as you started telling stories back, stories about the vicious life of a training legislacerator who started with nothing, about why she never lets her papers leave her side and why she sleeps with her cane’s blade halfway out._ )  Then she dusts the traces of ash off her hands (didn’t get a single smear on her suit) and looks up at you.

“…very well then, Sollux,” she say.  “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

One more day until the trial.


	4. Strong Enough To Stand

There are coldbloods in the crowd.  You should’ve been expecting that, but you still can’t get used to the idea there are people who _care_ this is happening.

Fuck, if it comes to that you still can’t believe that this is happening at all.

Feferi told you last night that the trial was going to happen.   _Last fucking night._   And from what you’ve heard, they’ve been plannin’ it since you got attacked in the first place, and the whole time they didn’t even bother to tell you.  Just planning some shit you’d have to be part of, without so much as a ‘”do you mind”. 

Well, obviously if they had asked “do you mind” you would have tried to make them stop.  But the point is that they figured all this shit without you, and now you feel like an idiot and you look like an idiot in your suit and you’re pretty much ready for acting like an idiot in front of the whole crowd that came here to see you get turned down for the charges, like always happens to coldbloods.

“…Pyrope,” you say, about as serenely as you ever have in your life, “…I’m gonna throw up.”

“Mm,” she says absently.  She’s tapping her cane on her little pointy chin, apparently not listening to you at all.  You wonder, all of a sudden, if Sol really did go down and talk to her in the end.  You haven’t seen him long enough to actually talk to him since Kar got shot (something about security, and it makes sense, not letting him out where more bulge-suckers can shoot at him) and you can’t just ask Pyrope herself if they finally got around to piling and finished up all the weird conciliatory tension goin’ on there.

“…why am I even here,” you groan, and flop back in your chair.  Pyrope sighs and doesn’t answer.  “Seriously, they been trying this shit since the Summoner flipped the hemospectrum, it’s not gonna _work—_ “

“Two things,” Terezi cuts you off.  She’s still not looking at you.  You guess she doesn’t have to—blind and all—but it’s still kind of fucking creepy.  “First: please don’t do that, I hear enough bigoted douchebags talking about the  _reversed hemospectrum_  in court cases.  Our illustrious first emperor did at least have better sense than to take a system that wasn’t working and turn it on its head.  The hemospectrum is not reversed.”

“… _might as well be_ ,” you grumble—she whacks you in the shins with her cane. 

“I hear enough warmbloods using that as an excuse on a night-to-night basis, Mr. Ampora,” she says, really stern.  “I do not need to hear it from you as well.”

You’re about to argue, but then you pick up the murmuring of the crowd behind you again and give up.  You’d probably throw up if you opened your mouth anyway.  You shrug bitterly and sit back.

“…and two,” says Terezi, when it’s obviously you ain’t in the mood to fight her.  “…nobody ever has, Mr. Ampora, because nobody in those cases had the foresight to hire  _me_.” 

“All rise!”

You get to your feet before anybody else in the crowd on pure instinct, orders going straight to your muscles without waiting for your pan to catch up.  A second later, as everybody else jumps up too, you understand why; the emperor sweeps up past you, so close you actually  _feel_  the flick of his wing stir the air next to your shoulder, turns to face the court and the cameras, and nods to you all sharply.  You all nod back—maybe there’s some kind of court protocol or something, you don’t fucking know, but it just feels like the thing to do.  Tav’s eyes flick over you—for a split second you think maybe he looks sad, or even like he wants to apologize to you—but instead he just turns on the heel of one shiny boot and walks up to his tall desk…seat thing. 

For a second as he turns to sit down, the light that shines down over the seat catches his spread wings, his gold crown, his sweeping horns and the startling golden-brown flash of his eyes, and you feel yourself huddle down a little, you gotta actually  _fight_ not to want to bow to him. 

Then he settles down in his chair carefully, lets his wings drop down behind him like a papery golden cape and folds his hands in front of him.

“Prosecutor Pyrope,” he says.

Terezi strides forward, swings her cane out elegantly to one side and folds down onto one knee.  She’s more graceful at bowing than you’ve ever been, and you practice that shit.   _And_  you can see. 

“…Attorney Scrach.”

There was a murmur, just a bit, when Terezi went up.  But when Scrach goes up, you hear a couple people actually out-loud gasp.  You’d be inclined to do the same, except you’ve worked so hard to make sure that your first reaction is to stare blankly and keep your trap shut (survival skill of the century).

You’ve never been scared of ghosts, anyway.

Scrach has no cane to sweep out, but he bows with an absolutely illegal amount of class regardless.  His white suit flips out behind him, and you catch a hint of lime green suspenders and snowy, spotless gloves—but it’s his  _face_ that gets you, his skin so light it’s silvery-white, the two neat fangs almost invisible against his pale lip. His eyes open for a second and flick sideways toward you like he felt you looking at him—your spine prickles, your suit scratches as your hands clench on your knees. 

His eyes are bright, acid green.  He’s got pure white hair, too, slicked back on his head so close he almost looks bald.  If he’s got horns, you don’t see ‘em.  If he has a sign, he’s not wearing it.

Hell, next to him, even Pyrope looks pretty normal.  The grey skin, the pitch-black hair and the bright orange spots of her horns, they’re all almost comforting next to Scrach’s unbelievable icy white…everything.  Even her suit, teal and black, and her bright sufferer-red boots are reassuring.  Scrach hardly looks like a troll at all.

“Rise,” says Tavros, and normally he would sound kinda embarrassed and awkward to say that, but not here and now.  It’s an order.  Terezi and Scrach both stand up with identical practiced movements, turn and walk silently back to their desks.  “Eridan Ampora and Tellis Majora.”

You been coached on this part.  Instead of walking out and bowing, you and the douchebag who attacked you both stand, bow where you are and wait.  Three seconds.  You both sit. 

“…alright,” says Tav evenly.  “The jury may come forward.”

He doesn’t read out the names of the jury, and you don’t really watch them come up.  Your eyes are fixed on them, but you’re not watching.

You think you’re really going to be sick.  You hate your life.

—

Eridan smells rather like he really is about to throw up. 

You had assumed that that was a case of histrionic upset at the unexpected trial—but his fins are folded down and you can smell the bloodless flat grey of his cheeks.  Behind you in the crowd, you feel his moirail, that tantalizingly rich scent that you can’t quite place.  It is unfortunate that you cannot call her forward at this point, at least not without upsetting your case before you even begin.  Eridan has to appear calm, together and civilized. 

Next to her, a tall, bony figure in black and gold, the distinctive smell of your own new maybe-a-moirail, fizzling with angry cherry and electric blueberry.  He’s tense and upset, but now is not the time for you to comfort him.  You are beginning to think you will have to pick your battles, calming Sollux Captor; angry and tense are his basic state of being, and trying to edit this may be impossible.

The jury files up very slowly, and you look down and page through the files you were given at the beginning of the trial as they come up, one by one, bow to the emperor, to the court, to each legislacerator and client and then file up to their seats by the wall.  Garnet, bronze, gold, and no lime or mutant to fill the gap.  Olive, jade…on down the line.  You don’t know which color is which, not just yet—you would need a better sniff of them first—but there will be one of each possible color, you know.  Ten jury-members, one for each file in front of you.  And the emperor’s two votes, both for his authority and symbolically in the stead of the two castes that are missing. 

It’s very symbolic.  You approve.

But the jury is finally gathered, and that is altogether enough waiting.  The longer you let Eridan stew in his own discomfort and apprehension, the more likely he will vomit all over the courtblock and the more likely you will start to get nervous as well from being swamped in the reek of his fear. 

Court proceedings begin, not with a bang, but a quiet scrape of your chair.

“I present the assault and conciliatory rape of imperial guard and bodyguard Eridan Ampora for the consideration of the court,” you say, very clearly, and bow your head. 

“What verdict?”

You shrug your shoulders with exaggerated care.  “The recognition of this assault as a crime is our preference, your Humility.  We leave resolution of the attacker’s sentence to the hands of the court.”

“…hm,” says Tavros Nitram at you, and you smell the slight, confused flutter of his wings before he says, with excellent neutrality, “…alright.”  He does not ask Scrach what he wants out of this—everyone knows what the defense wants.  A minimum sentence, and, at the very least, not death.  You sit down again, and award yourself a mental pat on the shoulder.  Leave the verdict to the court…an unconventional tactic, but not against the rules (you checked very carefully, bless the loophole-ridden haphazardness of the new imperial law).  In this way you pass off the blame on the majority; you cannot be defamed for requesting a harsh sentence on the head of a warmblood, and by stating that the purpose of the case is furthering of equality, you yourself appear socially conscientious.  This is ideal.

You are shaken from your thoughts by the sound of a throat being cleared, and you sniff hastily and realize that your opposition is standing, prepared to make his opening statements.  Excellent.  You are very  _very_ interested to know what angle he could possibly take on this case that does not involve the words “… _well we all know how coldbloods are_ ”,  _“He was asking for it_ ” or  _“no pailing, doesn’t count._ ” 

“…I would like to address the plaintiff,” says Scrach, slow and measured and drawling, and you hate his voice immediately; it’s slick and oily and somehow it tastes like a cloud in the air.  Everything is hazy and white, except for…

…no.  That cannot be right.

But it is; you take another whiff of his face, and you smell the piercing points of lime green that are his eyes, set in the silvery-white of his face, the shock of lime green that is his tie against the backdrop of his white suit.  Eridan’s hands clench on his knees as Scrach fixes him with those bizarre, brilliant eyes, but you are glad to smell that his blank, impassive expression does not twitch.  “It is true, I believe that you, Mr. Ampora, received offers for generous Imperial recompense?”

Eridan nods, and by the hint of sour anger you catch when he sighs, so small nobody else would hear or notice, you think that he would probably have been very, very happy to take the imperial compensation and not bother with this anymore. 

“And yet, here we are,” says Scrach coolly, and he spreads his arms, encompassing Eridan and his attacker, the audience, the jury, the empire.  His smile is venomous, courteously vicious.  “…your… _aggressive_  pursuit of revenge is noted.”

Eridan stands up so fast his chair clatters back.  You feel your body try to jump, a jolt that goes down to your bones, but stay still and ready your cane.  You are prepared and willing to put it into the soft spots on his feet and legs very, very hard if you need to. 

“Permission to  _respond,_  your Humility,” Eridan says, and he’s not growling, you are pleased to note, but neither does he sound calm.  He’s standing at attention, though, which looks very impressive with his broad shoulders.  His fins aren’t flared out on either side of his face, but they are spread.  “…and explain the situation as I see it.”

Irregular.  But then again the court proceedings have been much more freeform since the reformations of the Summoner Ascendant, all he really needs is the permission of the emperor.  You are impressed and slightly flattered—most people don’t listen nearly this well to your pre-trial briefing on legal matters, and they usually have far more to lose. 

“Alright,” says Tavros, startled—and then, probably feeling that this is not appropriately formal, he straightens up a little and ruffles his wings importantly.  “…permission,” (and the lack of an  _uh_ , hardly there but clear to someone listening for it) “—granted.”

“ _Thank_  you,” says Eridan, and turns to Scrach and his client.  He’s cooled down now.  The trace of disturbed calm in his voice is gone again.   He sounds very clear and very cold and his accent is coming back as he speaks.  You take a long breath of the picture, burning it into your mind; the straightness of his back and the splash of violet that is his flared fins.  He smells like…royalty.

“You know what I’m gonna tell you?” He doesn’t wait for an answer.  “I’m gonna tell you I’m supposed to keep my mouth shut.  I had people offer me more cash than I’ll ever make in my life to clam up and take it like a coldblood.  I got the people sayin’ they’ll hunt me down and rape me again if I come up here and talk—” and here he turns back, towards the hundreds of sharp gleams that are the cameras’ eyes, staring back at the galaxy as it stares at him.  “—I’m not afraid of any of you.   _That’s_  what’s got all a you scared, right?  I’ve had people come and tell me flat to my face they’ll take my palemate from me if I take a warmblood to court, and I gave them one chance to get the hell out of my face before I  _fucking murdered them._   Because I’m a  _vicious_  brineblood, right?  Not because I need my moirail just as much as any a you do and fightin’ for your moirail is one a the oldest stories in any book!”

You lift your cane a few inches and rap it sharply down on the tiles.  The sound is soft, but clear and sharp—Eridan jumps and then subsides a little, flattening his fins, breathing a little harder than before.  Back under control, but not in such a way you will be accused of harboring pale feelings for the already-quadranted client.  Excellent.  That was slightly less than optimal, but the argument was compellingly phrased and not overtly out of control.  He’s still on top of this.  (Behind you Feferi takes a shuddery little breath and clenches her hands on her knees, but her face is cold and calm and you think suddenly of the way the deepest parts of the ocean barely stir, even when there are storms howling on the surface.)

(Then you grind the tip of your cane down on your own foot until you stop thinking that sort of dramatic nonsense in the middle of a trial.)

“I’m…I apologize,” Eridan says eventually, very slow and even.  “I don’t take threats to my moirail lightly.”

The emperor’s face doesn’t show a single flicker of emotion as he nods understanding—you are impressed.  Such a bluff-based-card-game face is not to be taken lightly.

The lengthiest part of any trial, the meat of the proceedings, is the accounting; you hear both versions of what happened, from both points of view.  A new addition to the rules, since the reign of the Summoner.  You have studied as much ancient law as you have modern additions, and in olden times there would not be a time for the accused to tell their side of the story. 

You listen with interest as he spins the story his way,  _we just wanted a look at his fins, went berserk, had to calm him down somehow_.  He is a good liar.  You would be slightly more convinced if you couldn’t feel the little minute jolts of Eridan flinching at the words  _vicious_  and  _what was necessary_ and _out of control._   Not the unrepentant reaction of a true berserker.  You recall Sollux’s face when he described Eridan on the floor of the alley, and you feel his power hum in the air behind you, charging every breath with fury and lightning.

Eridan’s version is much shorter, much blunter, and viscerally painful to hear.  He does not cry.  He does not break down, or rant, or try to attack his opposition.  He just tells everyone, in short, angry fragments, what was said to him, where they hit him, the places they touched him and the way they hurt him so they could calm him again.  You request and receive permission, and put up the pictures of his injuries as evidence; the photos they snapped of his fins before they began sewing.  The reaction is overwhelmingly shocked and unnerved. 

You are unnerved as well, but not by the mess of grape that hits your nostrils from the picture.  You have seen worse gore and more blood before.  This is going far too smoothly to be right.  Something has to go wrong.

Your suspicions only spike higher when Scrach stands up and asks, in his quiet, oily voice, for permission to question the plaintiff.  There is no reason why he shouldn’t, regardless of your instincts telling you to avoid this at any cost; you cannot stop a legislacerator from questioning someone on the grounds that “I feel like he’s going to do something dirty and underhanded, your humility”.  That is not how the legal system functions.  You sit back, and prepare yourself for the worst.

“Mr…Ampora,” says Scrach, and Eridan nods the absolute minimum that is still societally acceptable.  “Please tell me what your strife specibus is.” 

“Fistkind,” says Eridan tersely.  Slowly, Scrach nods.

“And when did you come to the capitol city?”

“Transferred from a private security job in Iregna two and a half sweeps ago,” Eridan says immediately.  You may be fairly ambivalent about him as a person, but as a lawyer you do have to stop a moment and just sigh happily to yourself at the thoughtless speed with which he can rattle off facts and dates.  His memory is an asset that you have greatly enjoyed as you tried to piece together his story.  “Worked…thirty or forty other jobs, usually bodyguardin’ or something and then ended up here by employer recommendation for outstanding service,  _sir._ ”  It’s a bitter little tag-on on the end of the sentence—more of an attack than an honorific.  Scrach seems unfazed.

“A little more than two sweeps ago.”

“Yes.”

“Hmm,” he goes, just quiet enough it makes your teeth want to grind.  You don’t let them, just fold your hands and watch him pace theatrically with those pretentious white gloves clasped behind his back.  “… _interesting_.”

“And what exactly is this getting at, Mr. Scrach?”  You ask finally, when he doesn’t seem interested in elaborating—or even adding anything else—and he looks up at you with those freakishly bright, horrendously delicious lime eyes and smiles. 

“What am I getting at?”  He asks, and taps his chin with one finger.  “…whatever ‘hm, interesting’ gets at, Ms. Prosecutor.  I’m interested to know, have you heard of the serial ‘incinerator’ murders few sweeps ago, around the anniversary of the Summoner’s Ascension?”

You do not understand his play, and that makes you instantly suspicious.  This is a departure from his argument—and more importantly, looks like something that could only  _further_  your own cause.  Coldblood deaths increase by at least a factor of ten galaxy-wide on the anniversary of the first Emperor’s ascension to power.  This approach supports your argument on coldblood disadvantage and self-defense.

This can only go badly.

As it happens, you do remember those cases, though; among all the murders and drunken attacks, from seadwellers up, petering out at your own, modestly chilly class…there had been some outstanding variables. 

Brown, yellow, rust and green, always in groups, inside the capitol.  No valuables taken, and in all cases several of the murdered parties had a weapon on their person or nearby, suggesting they had aggressed or had had time to defend themselves.  None of the subjects were outstandingly wealthy.  Their injuries varied from extensive (half their body neatly incinerated, walls charred, buildings destroyed) to precise (a single hole large enough to put your arm through, right in the chest) but in every case they were…strange.  Neat.  The edges were cauterized.  The half of the body that had been separated was not present, not because the murderer was hoarding body parts, but because it was lying nearby in a fine spray of ash.

You do remember those deaths.  Despite the much more gruesome and gory murders that you are called in to look at on an almost nightly basis, they would be very hard to forget.

“The injuries recorded in the cases of those murders were quite unusual, were they not?”  Scrach muses, and pictures flash up on the screen.  You can smell the red, brown, yellow, green, even a teal like you, as cold as those specific murders had ever gone.  You make sure your face is as blank as ever, and nod diplomatically.

“Unusual is a fitting descriptor,” you concede, reluctantly, and he spins on his heel and goes back to pacing.

“…there are very few weapons that could, historically, be capable of that sort of damage,” he says, and snaps his fingers—the screen changes again.  You have no idea how he’s controlling them, and it’s aggravating and impressive in equal measures.  A picture pops up; you take a whiff and smell blue, blue, blue, and a white-hot core of heat in the center of the blue.  Is that…is that a laser rifle?

“Ahab’s Crosshairs,” says Scrach, and one or two people around and behind you draw little breaths of recognition.  You’ve never heard of such a weapon—but with a name like that you’re sure it has to be legendary.  One of a kind.

You don’t turn your head, but you sniff for Eridan, and you smell him going pale.

“Mr. Ampora,” says Scrach, and you can hear him closing in on his point, on what he’s been building towards this entire time.  “…what is your… _other…_ strife specibus?”

Eridan takes a deep breath.

“…riflekind,” he says grimly.  “…and before you start askin’ patronizin’ bullshit questions…yeah.  That’s my gun.  I killed them, I had—”

“For shame, Miss Pyrope,” Scrach cuts over him, cuts over the sudden shocked murmur of the court and smiles at you with pure evil in his eyes.  You want to punch him.  “Working with a murderer, attacking a fine, upstanding young goldblood who only took what measures he thought necessary to defend himself…” he clicks his tongue.  “…quite a black mark on your record.”  He turns to Eridan.  “And after all of your fancy wordplay, your client doesn’t have a word to say to defend himself against—”

“ _Defend_  myself?”  Eridan repeats disbelievingly, and you hold at least a touch of relief that he doesn’t sound like he’s about to go off in one of his irrational yelling jags.  You can pull out of this.  It’s salvageable.  “Defend w-what?  Me exercisin’ my empire-given right to fight back when somebody tries to kill me?  This doesn’t have a thing to do with the point of this fuckin’ trial!”

Scrach’s face doesn’t change, still that smug smirk, but he doesn’t hum or nod or grin patronizingly at the audience either.  You don’t think he was expecting Eridan to actually have something to say.  He rallies himself though, so quickly it’s as though he was never off balance.

“Imperial law states that lethal force is a last resort only, Mr. Ampora,” he returns, almost delicately.  “…are we to believe that in every case you had verbal evidence that they were, in fact, intending to cause you—”

“It’s called a  _reasonable assumption_  you—” Eridan starts, and you tap your cane again—he barely catches the insult, but he doesn’t stop, voice rising to yell over Scrach.  “—have you ever been out on the streets during Ascension time—?!”

“—or simply  _intimidating_  you out of reasonable fear of your natural brutality, and suffered your irrational—”

“— _fucking_  sure when you get hauled into an alley and someone tries to stab you in the gills—”

“—with a legendary weapon, just a touch of overkill, wouldn’t you—”

“—about gutting you like a fish and laugh and move on to another one of us—!”

“ _Order_!”  Tavros bellows, as loud and deep as his voice will go.  Everyone jumps and then goes still, waiting, as Tavros settles back down in his seat, frowning like a huge and mild thundercloud.  “…speculation isn’t a case,” he says firmly, “—and what he may or may not have done in his own defense has…has nothing to do with why we’re here.  If you have nothing else to say  _to defend the accused_ , please sit down.”  … _and shut up_ , is unspoken on the end—Tavros is good at keeping his slightly distant, easy-going expression on over the emotions that you can smell under the surface, but there are definitely whiffs of anger and impatience in the air around him.  

Scrach hesitates for just a second, and then smiles his white-oil smile and bows extravagantly, retreating back to the yellowblood he’s meant to be defending.  Majora looks confused and slightly concerned now—he tries to say something, but Scrach isn’t listening. 

“Alright.”  Tavros crosses his arms and turns to the jury, lined up along the wall.  A few of them are glancing at each other and at Eridan—at Scrach, at the yellowblood.  Most of them just stare at the ground or at their own hands, thinking. 

After a few seconds, one of them stands up and bows formally—straight, branched horns, workman’s shoulders and silver stripes of scarring across his arms.  Blueblood, by the distant, sharp whiff you catch of his eyes, although many of the trolls chosen to make the final decision have chosen to dress in gray.  “Your Humility,” he says, quietly but clearly, “…I think we need some time to come to a decision.  I’d like to request a…” he hesitates for a second—and no wonder, because if he’s asking what you think he’s asking, this is quite unusual.  Since the Summoner Ascendant  reformed the court system, added the voting trolls and got rid of his imperial tyranny (your least favorite part of the new procedures), there have been only a few times anyone has requested…

“…a recess,” you provide quietly, and the blueblood glances at you and then nods. 

“A recess, your Humility.”

“…granted,” says Tavros, and you catch the tiniest hint of a glance in your direction, checking if that’s the right word.  You nod a fraction of an inch and stand, pushing your chair back.  “You have half an hour. “

The audience murmurs and the courtroom slowly fills up with noise as chairs are pushed back and arguments spring up all around you—the noises of trolls at rest.  Eridan takes a deep breath, and you graciously pass him your water bottle.

“So,” he says, and you are surprised at how dull his voice sounds.  “…how screwed  am I?”

“ _We_ ,” you correct pointedly, and spin around in your chair, putting your feet up in his lap.  He squawks in surprise, then settles, watching you.  “… _we_  are not actually exceptionally screwed, Mr. Grape Jelly.”  And regardless, it is not really a matter of how screwed he is so much as how screwed or not-screwed the opposition is—for once in his life, he is on the attack.  But he doesn’t need to be reminded of that right now.  No point in unsettling him.  You reach out; he hands the water bottle back to you hesitantly and you take a sip and hand it back. “You did a fairly excellent job, considering the circumstances.”

“Yeah, right.”

“No, I am very serious!”  He really did do a surprisingly good job.  Perhaps his tendency towards dramatic gestures is better suited to a courtblock than to guard duty.  “I would still lay money on our case.  Think about it.  If you were in the jury for a case like yours, would you vote against a violet-blood because they killed a few people during Ascension?”

“…’course not,” he says blankly.  “I mean, you gotta do what you gotta do to keep breathin’, right?”

“Exactly.” You shrug.  “You are used to being judged by warmbloods, Mr. Ampora.  You are not just being judged by warmbloods here.  The jury covers every available color of the hemospectrum, barring, of course, the limebloods, mutants, and fuschias.  You should have at least four or five votes from the cold end of the spectrum.  You definitely have the emperor’s.  It may be close, but I believe we can squeak through.  So fins up!”  You nudge at his leg with the tip of one pointy, shiny boot.  “…we’re not done yet.”

He hesitates, but then he sighs, nods and subsides back into his seat, flicking his fins and tapping his feet.  He’s obviously still nervous, but you appreciate that he’s not pushing you further about this, because you like to keep your confidence nicely solid and it becomes harder and harder as you’re questioned.  You get up, visit the load gaper, and come back to the pleasant sight of him _not_  getting in an argument with anyone or having a fist-fight, just sitting there twitching and drinking the rest of your water in nervous little gulps. 

He stays that way, almost unmoving, for the rest of the half hour.  By the time everyone is seated again and the voters are back and settling into their seats, he looks distinctly pale in the gills and fins, and he’s nicked his lip on one fang as he nervously chews on them, but he also has a smell of flat grey resignation about him.

You can’t wait to see his face when you win.

The silence settles slowly but inexorably, and everyone turns to look at the voters.  The air hums with their focus, and stinks of their expectation.  Some of it is the angry, dragging smell of ancient hate—you know the smell of bigotry. It does not encourage you, but it is not allowed to faze you either.  This will be a victory.  It has to be.  (You are glad, very glad, even though it is not ethically sound to remove a quadrantmate from the site of trial—you are very glad for the thick doors, the locks and the handcuffs between this trial and Gamzee Makara.)

For a few seconds there’s silence.  Nobody wants to go first, and you wonder if the jury is feeling the same thing you are—like the crowd extends out past this packed hall, you can feel the whole _galaxy_ watching you, even if you can’t sniff them out.  And then—

“Prosecution,” says the blueblood with the ponytail firmly, and doesn’t slump from his perfect posture when a few of the warmbloods in the crowd hiss and mutter.  “There are two witnesses that he was being pacified, obviously without his consent, and one of them is from his moirail—and Ampora’s other actions were inconsequential to this case, sir.  He was statistically at risk, and since he’s a guard and he was acting in his own defense those actions technically fall under the old martial laws.  Sir.”

Tavros nods slowly.  You have a copy of the same folders in front of him; you flip to the blueblood and take a whiff.  Yellow matesprit, green moirail.  Either he’s not letting that stop him, or they’re part of the warmblood group who actually makes an effort to treat every bloodcolor the same way, as they’re legally required to.  It’s pleasant to remember sometimes that, even though you have to deal with cases like this far, far too often, every troll is not a heinously bigoted fuckwad.

One vote down.

“Defense,” says the rustblood in the collar—your pusher contracts, but you know it doesn’t show on your face.  The first downvote is always a jolt, but you have sweeps of experience not letting it show.  Mr. Rotten-apple Red doesn’t give a reason, just sits back and looks down at his feet with his ridiculous floppy ears pinned back.  Eridan doesn’t react beyond a deep, slow breath, closing his eyes slowly and then opening them; they’re very sharp, flicking from face to face like he’s cataloguing them, leaving little streaks of purple in the air to your sensitive nose.

The coughing purpleblood rasps, “ _Prosecution_.”  The yellowblood with the nasty smile: “Defense.”  They give each other dirty looks—if you find out that this verdict is just worth a few hours of pitch-flirting for them you’re going to tell Karkat, because unlike you he doesn’t see why it would be unreasonable to just flip a desk and then go find them and personally beat their faces in. 

Two in favor, two against.

The oliveblood with the glasses who looked so horrified when Eridan didn’t deny the murders—“defense”.  Nothing you weren’t prepared for.  Especially after Scrach made his case.  She’s been stinking of fear the entire trial.

And then the seadweller grins lazily and says, “… _defense._ ”

The only sign of his Humility’s alarm is the way his wings flick—once, sharply, with a sprinkle of cinnamon-gold through the air that would make you want to sneeze if your breathing apparatuses hadn’t just temporarily shut off.  You were supposed to have the coldblood vote—the midbloods are a gamble and you were counting on the colder colors to boost the prosecution vote, give yourself a buffer.  Even if several midbloods vote prosecution, this is going to be far too close. 

The seadweller glances up at you and the emperor and grins and you pretend to hold his eyes as you slide papers and find his file.  Only one quadrant filled; kismesis, frequently hospitalized, recently came to Sollux’s attention for the ‘coincidental’ deaths of all his flushed quadrants since he was old enough to fill them.  But (maybe because of the way Eridan winced, the way his blank, calm mask slipped just enough to look betrayed) somehow you don’t think the kismesis is the one you should be worrying about.

Out of all the seadwellers out there, you had to get the psychopath who’d vote against his own color.  You make a mental note to dig a little deeper in his quadrant-corners’ deaths after this trial is over, and turn your eyes to the next jury-members in the line.

The cerulean and the teal both vote for the prosecution, and you’re pleased and relieved, although not too surprised—the teal’s wearing a nice jacket, badly fitted (just well-off enough to make a good show for the court, but not enough to own anything nice).  The cerulean has the gaunt smell of someone who has eaten too many cheap meals with nothing in them but sugar and fat; not as successful as Vriska Serket at clawing his way up in the world.  Neither of them is likely to care much what Eridan has done wrong, no matter what Scrach says. 

And then brown votes against Eridan as well, and slowly, silently, all eyes turn to the last member of the jury, the deciding vote.  It’s a jade-blood, sitting thin and quiet and unassuming in the corner, draped all over in jade cloth so thick you can’t see a single inch of skin.  (There’s a strange smell to them under all that piney jade—something chilly and…bright.  But you can’t quite parse out what it is.)  Their horns are two thin, graceful curves, mismatched by the hook on the end of the left one, and for a second they’re so still and quiet you’re honestly pretty sure they’ve gone to sleep. 

Then they bow their head and fold their gloved hands into their sleeves.

“… _prosecution_ ,” they say, very quietly.

The audience explodes.  The yellowblood looks like he’s about to cry.  Eridan looks about the same.  He honestly never expected this to matter, did he?  That even if there was proof, nobody would care.  If you weren’t so busy holding your expression of glee, you would sigh.  For such a history buff, he really doesn’t seem to understand his position.  He and Makara are more symbolic than either of them seems to realize.

“Well done, Mr. Ampora,” you tell him, as kindly as you know how, and resist the urge to cackle and send a few triumphant rude hand gestures in the direction of your opposition.  “He won’t be hurting anyone else any time soon.”

—

Your name is Eridan Ampora and.  You think…you just won?

People are making a lot of noise around you, but you ain’t listening especially.  The yellowblood who raped you is meeting your eyes and not looking away.  You hold his eyes and don’t look away either, even though your eyes are kind of waterin’ and you really haven’t got a clue why.  He ain’t gettin’ away with hurting you.  You just won.

You just  _won._

“Challenge!”

It’s Majora.  Scrach has been whisperin’ to him and now he’s standing up, eyes all wide and face all pale.  You’ve seen enough people about to do something stupid over the years; the look makes all your muscles tense up to fight.

“I have the right to fight him for it!”  He snarls, and lowers his horns right at you in challenge, bares his uneven warmblood fangs.  “It’s the law!”

“Your Humility,” says Terezi, and even though her face is blank you’re pretty sure she’s not happy at all.  Her voice sounds weird and tight.  “…it…is true that there are ancient laws of combat.  They haven’t been formally invoked for—”

“Regardless of the amount of time between challenges,” Scrach cuts in smoothly, “…the law remains.  And to ignore the law in sentencing a criminal, why, that would entirely invalidate the justice system, would it not?  Mr. Ampora may either accept the challenge or drop the charges, this is, ahah,  _the law._ ”

Tavros doesn’t move for a long, long second.  His eyes flicker from you to Terezi to Scrach to Majora, back to Fef sittin’ behind you and then back to you again.

“…we won’t tolerate murder,” he says finally, reluctant but firm.  “…the rules are different now that you’re convicted, if you kill him then your,” (you hear him catch an ‘uh’ before it can come out—his voice only shakes a little.) “…your sentence changes to death as well.”

“Sure!” snaps the yellowblood—his eyes look wild and wide, is he high?  Scrach’s smile is making your fins prickle.  Did he want this, is he doing this? “Why not?  But if he doesn’t die—”

“…if he’s incapacitated,” says Tavros, and you can almost hear how much it’s hurting him to do this, how does he even make it as emperor, so fuckin’ soft— “…then your fight with him is over.  Your charges will be waived.”

Yellowblood looks disappointed.  “If he doesn’t die”, huh? It’s clear enough where that went, and where the emperor knew it was goin’ too; he was hopin’ to get you down and take you just close enough to dyin’ his sentence doesn’t go fatal.  Like fuck you’re ever letting him get that kind of power over you again.  Some nights you still wake up and think your face is pressed into the dirty street, your mouth is full of bile and blood—

You stand up so hard you almost fall over and walk forward, tug off your dress jacket and roll up your sleeves.  The yellowblood staggers forward as well, and raises his hands.  The court block falls silent.

This is a relic from an older time, these fights.  Ritual combat wasn’t ever as popular with the low—with the warmbloods, but they still know how it goes, even if their understanding of it is basic and crude.  There are intricate and ancient rules for how this is supposed to go, and His Humility obviously knows ‘em by heart, by the way he called out that loophole about convicted criminals and death sentences. You notice he didn’t say a word about what happens if  _you_ finish the fight that way. ( _You get off free, you’re the winner, you didn’t challenge, you could kill him here you could_ kill him)

Well there’s one thing for sure and that’s that you ain’t about to kill this stupid fucker.  Even if you were so inclined—which you ain’t, you haven’t ever  _enjoyed_  killing people, although you’d probably mind less with this guy than anybody else you’ve ever had to finish off—you literally just finished up a trial where they decided you weren’t a vicious freak coldblood who deserved to be raped.  The last thing you want to do is kill someone with your bare hands on a public wave to the rest of the galaxy.

…not that you’d be doing most of the actual killing with your hands.  Now they’ve taken your guns away for the moment you’d mostly be going for him with your teeth.  You think that’s probably worse.

Your first look at Majora seems to be right though; he’s worked to get muscles that look good, but he doesn’t seem to have too much experience with fighting.  This should be pretty easy.  He’s got one fist up in front of him, but the other one hovers back, not even fisted up, just hanging there stupid and open like he doesn’t know what to do with it.  Maybe he’s trying to use it as a block?  Pretty weak-ass block.  What the fuck is he thinkin’, going after you?

He makes the first move.  Dives at you, off-center and shaky, and takes a swipe at your thorax, flailing his arms at you.  Goddamn, even in the alley he was a better fighter than this.

“Are you tryin’ to use me to commit suicide or what?” you growl at him, and take a quick half-step back, stayin’ out of his range.  He’s pretty fast, but you’ve been doing double the time of anyone else against the new Zahhak training robots and they are so much faster.  He throws another punch—you turn, covering yourself with your arms, and let it glance off.  He’s going for your gills, dirty fucker.  If he hits those you’re going to be done playing nice.  You’re putting him on the ground and making sure he stays there.

He doesn’t answer the question either, but his eyes crackle white and yellow and the air starts to smell like that burning ozone scent you associate with gettin’ unfairly pinned against walls and ceilings and Sol laughing at you.  Doesn’t look like he’s got the kind that can lift you though.  You’re just trying to figure out what it is he’s actually intendin’ to do with ‘em then when another fist comes at your gills.  It’s a wild hit, and he stumbles too close to you, off-balance—

And then his other hand comes around, the hand you ignored, open like a slap, and he slams your left shoulder.   _Zap_ , all the way up the side of your neck and down to your fingertips; you dance back from him in a hurry, keeping on your toes and watching him, but your arm feels like white noise, the fingers won’t even twitch.  Fuck, _fuck_.  You’d almost rather he had the kind that picked things up and threw them around, god—but now you understand the way his other hand is hovering, open.  It’s not there as some kind of half-assed block, the kid uses it like a stun gun.  Can’t let that hit you again.

It’s a stalemate for a few minutes after that—rushed swipes that don’t connect, hasty retreats.  You circle each other.  You got more fighting experience overall, you’re positive.  But the fighting he  _has_ gotten in was all hand to hand, where you always wanted to be the one at a distance, the one drawing a bead and dropping intruders like flies.  You circle and he snarls and you keep your face blank and look for openings.

One finally comes to you after minutes of patient waiting, after the crowd has started to murmur again, after you took a really close swing at Majora and just grazed one cheek hard enough to send him staggering.  Pissed him off, you can tell, he’s breathing harder through his nose and you knew he had to snap eventually, he pulls back a fist—

He goes for a punch and overbalances as you sidestep him and shove him past you, hard, sending him staggering towards the ground and he overextended and left his jaw way open, you can knock him out if you just—

He turns the stumble into a dive, his crackling hand connects with your gills, and you see white.

When you come back to you’re on the ground, struggling.  Every thought about trying to be peaceful, last it out—those all vanished the second he touched your gills and the numbness is all up and down one side of your thorax and you can’t  _breathe_  and then he gets his hand on your horns—

 _White_  again it’s so bright and you can’t see, can’t breathe, he’s shutting you down again  _not again not again—_ you can feel yourself thrashing, weaker and weaker, trying to get your hands at his throat, bite him,  _something_ , but he’s followed you down onto the ground and he keeps a hold of your horns and jolts you again so hard you pass out again.   By the time you blink back awake you’ve missed precious seconds and he’s on top of you, squeezing your horns so hard and low it hurts, like he wants to fucking  _tear them off_  and you wouldn’t be able to stop him, you—

You can’t move.

You’d forgotten how scary it was, and you keen in the back of your throat and thrash, struggling to move more than a finger.  People are yelling, Tavros is yelling loudest, telling him  _stop, stop_ stop _this fight is—_ but he’s not listening, he just pulls back a fist and hits you so hard something in your face goes  _crack_.  Blood trickles back in your mouth and your nose, there are loose teeth in your mouth and your nose is a mess of pain, lukewarm blood all down your face—

There’s a  _crack_  of bone on bone, the heavy, familiar sound of fists in flesh.  The yellowblood yelps and his hand rips away from your horn and his weight is gone. 

You’re lyin’ on the ground again, limp as a boned fish, and someone steps over you; a pair of skinny legs in rolled-up pants. Bare, bony feet that walk silent. 

“ _Quadrant substitution_ ,” hisses Gam’s voice, warped and hoarse with growling.

“Gamzee,” says the emperor’s voice, hoarse with shock, “—G-gamzee, what are you doing here—?”  The jury-troll with the ponytail and the branched horns gets his hands around one arm—little bit warmer than you but barely, maybe a purple, maybe indigo—and the jadeblood grabs your other one; they pull you up against Ter’s desk.  Tavros is up out of his chair.  The yellowblood is missing teeth, bleeding from the mouth and shivering with wide, mad eyes.  You can’t see Scrach.  “You can’t do this—“

“Actually, your Humility,” says Terezi, very quietly, and everyone stops, listening to her.  Not Gamzee.  He’s not listening to anyone at all, his eyes don’t leave Majora’s bloody face.  “…he can.  It’s a very _very_  old rule, and nobody ever used it excessively except for the purple-bloods, but it’s in the rules of challenge.  Ampora is one of his ash-mates.  He can step in for him if he’s incapacitated.”

“The fight  _ends_  when he’s incapacitated,” Tavros says firmly, and Gamzee growls.  “I’m not letting this devolve into a cycle of revenge, it can end _here._ ”

“ _And I’ll end it_ ,” Gamzee hisses, and for the first time since you’ve known him there’s a flash of colors in the air and his specibus opens; a pair of long-handled clubs, white as bones with black stripes around the ends.  They look old.  His smile is possibly the most frightening thing you’ve ever seen.  “ _Get out of my way, love. This is called_ holy motherfucking retribution _.”_

“Gamzee,” says Tavros quietly, “—this is a fight, not an execution, it’s settled now, leave him—”

It will be a point of pride for you later, when you come to fully understand what happened in the next few crowded seconds, that even experiencing a resurgence of the total paralysis of most of your voluntary muscles you managed to force yourself to throw your numb body forward in time to catch most of the emperor’s weight before he hit the ground.  At the time, it just feels like someone has dropped a fullgrown musclebeast on you, and everything kind of blacks out for a few seconds.  You caught Tav’s weight (most of it on your sore thoracic struts, god _damn_ ) but he fell longways to you and you think you heard a  _crack_  like skull on ground and there’s something warm dripping on your arm.  Gam didn’t hit him—barely even looked like a shove, just put a hand on him and just  _moved_ him, as easy as that and now he’s not moving but Gamzee hasn’t looked back to check. 

Someone is screaming.  People are yelling and roaring and you manage to make out bits of words that don’t make sense,  _will this stop you if we motherfuckin’ hurt you back, IS IT GONNA STOP THEN_?! Fef is pullin’ at your arm, trying to help you up but your legs feel like they’re crumbling away from under you, everything is covered in red and blue sparks that shake the walls and the crowd that started to close around you when your fight ended have spread out again, left a big empty circle around Gamzee and Majora, muttering and scared. 

Majora makes the first move—springs forward and weaves to one side at the last second, ducks under Gam’s clubs.  His crackling hand catches Gamzee’s shoulder on the backswing and you  _see_ that arm go dead but Gamzee just puts his weight into it, spins wild on one foot, swings his arm like dead weight and Majora looks around and starts to duck, but too late. 

You hear something crack.  You’re not sure whether it’s the yellowblood’s nose or Gamzee’s wrist but either way he’s not stopping and with his other arm he can still aim.

There’s no sound quite like a bone breaking, you think dizzily as Majora staggers away, gasping, dangling his useless arm.  It’s the one he uses for the psionics—he raises the other one and it sparks too, but he’s clumsy with it and you ain’t  _ever_  seen someone fight quite the way Gamzee is, all circles and weird, crossing steps, circling him, making him spin to keep his eyes on the clubs.

Some of the crowd and the trolls who voted on your case have started pulling out weapons now.  The air is full of sparks and Sol is pushing people away from the fight with his powers but Tav is still unconscious next to you.  The jadeblood has reached into the folds of their robe, but they didn’t pull out a weapon, like you hoped—just a…tube of lipstick…?  Goddammit,  _not the fucking time._   The blueblood has his fists up, but he doesn’t look any more eager to interfere with the fight than any of the others at the edge of the crowd.  Gam’s face is all twisted up in a silent, sneering kind of snarl, his eyes are pure, crazy fucking  _red._  

“ _What is_ wrong _with you_ —?!”  Majora is rasping, too quiet to carry far, and there’s a frenzy of terror in his eyes that you saw when he challenged you, all rabid-animal vicious.  “ _The_ fuck _are you doing—?!_ ”

“Aw,” says Gam, and his voice is still all soft and sweet and murmuring and you can see every one of his fangs like needles.  “—but how’d a brother stand by when his ashmate's on the ground making  _sounds like that, huh?_ ”  He—he fucking  _flickers_ , holy shit, you thought he was fast before—a blur and a yell and then they’re on the ground, Gam’s got a foot on his throat and you never seen his back so straight, his head held so proud.  It makes your fins prickle and your fingers arch for your claws. 

“…you who think yourself great,” says Gam, and Majora claws at his leg as he presses his weight down slowly.  “Be fucking  _humbled._   _Someday we all.  FALL._ ”

And then he stops.

Majora’s gone limp, his face is gross and yellow-grey and his eyes are rolled up in his head; where he clawed Gam’s leg, a trickle of blood is flowing down, splattered vivid and terrible across his cheek.  The room is silent as death.  You want to run up and drag him away.  You want him to do it.  You want to shoot him before he can tear your throat out.  You want to curl up and cry.

Gam steps away and drops his clubs.

“… _Disciple 18_ ,” he says, and his eyes are still red but the snarl is gone and he looks tired as hell and  _different._   There’s something beatific about his face, something scary and far, far away.  “…verse 1.  Wrote that to your emperor, you know that shit? The  _Summoner Ascendant._   You ever heard the good word, brother?”

Majora lies on the ground and wheezes.  You don’t think he’s even conscious.  Gam seems to get the same impression, because he sighs and puts his clubs away.  Turns back to look at you.  For a second, you see the snarl again, the twist of his lip and the white, jagged line of his fangs.  His eyes flash red at the sight of you lying there, his hands twitch.

“…Figure that means I win,” he says, and looks over at Scrach.  For a second, his eyes narrow and they look at each other silently, different as black and white.  Then Scrach smiles and bows his head.

“…my client will serve his sentence with no further complaints,” he says, and he picks up his papers and tucks them inside his suit.  “Good day.” he bows to Tav’s empty seat and then to Terezi and then turns to the door and just walks.  The crowd goes to either side so fast it’s like he’s carryin’ a bomb or something, and he walks down the aisle and opens the door.

“Who the hell are you?” says a voice, and it’s so loud and sudden in the quiet room, everybody jumps all at the same time. 

The overstretched tension snaps.  Everybody breathes again.  You could fucking cry. 

Karkat Vantas is standing in the door.  Everything seems to get more solid as he glares around at you all—everybody kind of winces and stares at their feet and he comes striding into the room like he never got shot at all, like you never had his blood on your hands and never saw his eyes wander and close.  The crowd that opened so sharply for Scrach eases forward again, but not to close around him; the alley of pale faces all of a sudden is full of smiles and reassurance.  Faces that look like how you feel, which is— _safe._   You just feel safer having him here, and you know he knows.  That’s why he’s here. 

You see him hiding the wince as he walks and something hot and painful squeezes at your thorax.  You want to have the bullet holes instead of him, you deserve them more and he hasn’t ever wanted to do anything but good, and. 

Your pan shorts out on where that thought was going.  Sol still sparks like a broken power line and when he goes to talk to Kar it’s pretty clear he’s trying really hard not to yell—Kar just kind of waves him off.  Sol stares after him as he keeps walking, and Terezi comes over to him and leans up on her pointy little candy-red toes to whisper in his ear.  He opens his mouth, breathes, and closes it again. 

That’s good.  Good for him.  Do him good have a moirail, that’s…good.

God you’re so tired all of a sudden.

Gam’s just standing there, staring at Karkat as he comes down to the front of the room.  The emperor is stirring next to you, there’s a medical team behind Karkat and more guards behind them, coming down to pick up Majora and cuff him and drag him away.  The breathless disbelief is strong enough you think you could probably just keel over and go to sleep right now, except then there’s light little tapping footsteps and Feferi hits you like a ton of literal bricks and slams your head against Ter’s desk. 

“ _Fucksake,_ ” you say, hoarse and whispery but heartfelt.  “Ow.” 

She doesn’t answer, just clings to you and lets out these weird little noises like laughter turned inside-out.  She sounds gutted and terrified.

“Fef,” you tell her numbly.  “…we  _won._ ”

She nuzzles her face into your fin and hugs you so hard you can’t breathe.

Karkat doesn’t look at you yet.  You feel a little twinge of hurt over that for a second, but then a second later you understand why.  Gamzee  is staring at Karkat as hard as you are as he comes closer, and his face is a terrible thing to see.  You can  _see_  his hands shaking from here.  He wavers—backs a step away like he’s scared Karkat will hurt him.

“You attacked him,” says Karkat, and it doesn’t sound like a guess.  Gamzee backs up another step, and if he looked scared before, he looks terrified now.

“He,” he starts to say, and swallows hard like his throat is too dry to talk.  Karkat just nods. 

“You didn’t kill him.” 

Gamzee shakes his head, but his hands clench and Karkat’s eyes are fixed on his face; whatever he reads there makes him frown.

“…but…you wanted to,” he says slowly, like he really is reading him like a book, and Gamzee winces. 

“You—” he starts to say.  He looks like he’s probably about to either fall over or start cryin’.  Or maybe murder some people?  You’re beginning to think you can’t judge Gamzee Makara nearly as well as you hoped.  “—just lyin’ there, you wouldn’t open your eyes like they gone and done somethin’ as couldn’t be fixed and you just wouldn’t—I thought—”

“It’ll take more than a bullet to kill me,” Karkat says, just loud enough to carry, firm enough to cut him off, but you can see a trace of that weird, ashy pallor under his skin and he’s swaying just enough to see.  The crowd mutters and buzzes—oh yeah, proof he got shot, you forgot that was a secret until just now—and he leans in and puts a hand on his moirail’s shoulder, running it gently up and down.  “This isn’t even the guy who shot me, you big idiot.  You can’t just take shit out on the first person who pisses you off.” 

He smiles, just a little, tired and exasperated and soft.  “…I’m glad you didn’t kill him,” he says, and reaches up to lay just the tips of his fingers, real soft, on the pointy ridge of his moirail’s cheek. 

It’s hardly a pale gesture at all, fearsomely understated considering he made such a dramatic reunion out of this and all, and it isn’t even a patch on some of the stuff Fef sends you when you have to be apart for a long time.  But it makes Gam shudder.  The kid’s weapons barely made him pause when he was fighting, but now he stops and blinks and sways a little, wincing.  He looks like death.  Kar looks like death back from the succophagus.  You feel like someone’s taken your brain and tenderized it like a cut of meat.  Most of the other members of your clade look about ready to collapse as well, and you feel a jolt of concern and then an equally strong jab of self-righteous annoyance, because hell if they didn’t want this to turn out so dramatic they should have just told you and you could have warned them not to have a trial at all. 

You feel kind of bad for the emperor though.  He’s awake now, surrounded by a bunch of people trying to ask him questions and poke at his head and catch him up on what happened all at once, and he just looks kind of tired and dizzy and miserable.  Kind of like how you feel.

They’re really just…trolls.

Tav’s just a troll, and Gam’s just a troll and you’re just a troll and Kar is hurt and tired and doin’ his fuckin’ level best and he’s  _just a troll_. 

You flex your hands carefully and watch his face through the crowd as he talks to his moirail, and wonder if he’s pissed off at you.  Could you make it okay by just apologizing?  Make it okay that you fucked up and got him hurt and you can see it takin’ every bit of what’s in him just to stay upright.  You’re not just surprised someone stepped in for you, you’re surprised Gam didn’t turn around and bash your head in with his clubs.  You weren’t on your guard, you weren’t even paying attention, you just—you felt like—

You thought Kar was invincible.

Just a troll.

He’s just…

Fighting so hard.

…you feel so…

—

Your name is Karkat Vantas, and right now your entire left side feels kind of like it’s on fire.

You’re currently getting caught up on events as they happened from your moirail’s point of view, and are getting increasingly more confused.  Gamzee’s head hasn’t been a happy place since you got shot, it sounds like.  He blames himself for not noticing the shooter was there, he blames himself for not killing the asshole after he shot you, he blames himself for stepping away from you, because you didn’t get shot until after he let go of you.

You make it very, very clear to him that all of these sentiments, while kind of understandable (hell, you hate yourself for enough incomprehensible bullshit, you get that) are moronic and don’t make any sense.   

So…he knew the trial was today, he heard the guards outside his cell talking about it.  Then someone came along and said a couple of words to the guards—the door unlocked, and then everything got quiet and when he went to push on the door it swung right open.  His clubs were lying on the ground outside.  Picked them up, hunted down the courtroom, and when he came in Eridan was on his back making terrible noises, like he was trying to scream but he _couldn’t_  and Gamzee’s account falters.

“…and…?”  you prompt him and he shakes his head, frowning, pressing his fingers to one temple like he’s got a pan-ache. 

“…I…” he starts, very slowly.  “Tavros stepped up, in front of me, like, he said—not to—I was so fuckin’ angry though, I just went right past—”

Your eyes flicker back over his shoulder before you can stop them, and he catches the movement and turns as well.  You grab at him, but too late.  There was a crowd of medicullers and— _doctors_ —around the emperor when you got there, and by the time you calmed Gamzee down enough to pay attention to anything but his clubs and the next target Tavros was almost invisible, surrounded by people.  But he’s not now and you see Gamzee go very still.  Tavros is sitting against the desk on the ground, holding his head.  There’s a trickle of brown blood over one eye where he hit the ground, and he winces every time he runs his fingers over it.

“fuck—” starts Gamzee, and half-turns like he’s going to run back.  You grab his wrist, and he could drag you like you don’t weigh a thing but you know he won’t.  He stops in his tracks and makes a hoarse, conflicted noise, half a curse.  “No, come on I gotta—

“Leave him alone,” you tell him, as gently as you can manage—he struggles, but he’s reluctant to break your hold.

“But—!”

“ _Leave him_.”  You insist, and Gamzee makes a long, quiet, painful sound in the back of his throat.  “Talk to him later.  You can’t go over there right now.” 

He looks like he’s about to start crying.  You sigh, throw modesty to the winds, and reach up to pull him down into a hug.  For a second conversation falters, and then it rises again as Gamzee wraps his arms around you and buries his face in your hair.

“… _didn’t look_ ,” he says into your hair, muffled.  “ _Just…got him out of the way, I just—needed to—I didn’t push that hard, I didn’t_ mean to— _“_

 _“_ You’re a lot stronger than you think you are.”  He sniffs—the next breath that ruffles your hair trembles.  Shit.  “…no no,  _shhhhh,_  don’t cry yet, okay?  Cry later.  Not in front of all these assholes.”  Shit, it’s embarrassing but…it needs saying doesn’t it? “… _I, uh, don’t want anybody to see that but me._ ”

He stiffens and then you see the bits of his face that you can see go abruptly purple. 

“… _yeah,_ ” he says, and pulls back.  Sniffs hard and scrubs at his face with his wrists like a big gawky wriggler..  “…’kay.”

“Kar.  Karkat!”

As you turn to see who’s yelling, Eridan comes out of the crowd at a dead sprint.  He elbows a yellowblood out of the way trying to get to you and doesn’t even look at them—who is this guy and what has he done with Eridan Ampora?

He comes to a stop in front of you, clutching at his side, breathing hard and swaying pretty alarmingly—he could barely move when you got there.  “Kar.”  he wheezes,  “I—”

“Breathe, nookmunch,” you order him serenely— he does, in big, shallow gasps.  “…breathe  _better_  than that.  Deep breaths, man.”

Eridan follows instructions and takes big breaths.  Aradia is leaning over her moirail behind him—you see her sit up straighter and half-turn, glaring at Eridan like she blames him for all of this.  Then her eyes flicker over your shoulder to Gamzee’s face and she thins her lips and turns away.  Well hell, who would’ve figured.  This is actually a functional relationship? 

Whatever works.

Eridan seems to have caught his breath again; he straightens up a little and tries again.  “Maybe I wasn’t—” he starts, and then swallows hard and stares at you pleadingly, like he’s asking you to figure out what he’s saying just from that.  You blink at him.  “…I wasn’t…I thought I was makin’ it up, but—if you—if you think you could ever maybe…”

He stops, and he’s turning purple now. 

You understand.  With a strange kind of serenity, you reach out and put a hand over his mouth before he can start babbling again.

“Dinner,” you say, a little bit dreamily.  “There will be fucking _romance._ ”

Eridan chokes a little bit, but when you give him a questioning look he just stares back at you from behind your hand, purple-faced and fluttery-finned, and nods.

“Sure,” you say, and take your hand away.  “Okay.  Tomorrow then.”

“I—j-just—just like—?”

“Sure,” you say, and hear the slightly hysterical edge to your voice like you’re listening to someone else.  Gamzee hovers a bit closer, like he’s not sure whether he should be papping you or not.  “Why not?”

Eridan’s face says much better than he could right now that he can think of a lot of reasons why not and is incredulous that you can’t think of them as well, but just then the discussion ends because Gamzee gets tired of waiting and scoops you up off your unsteady feet.

“Couch,” he says, and bends down a little closer to whisper to you where Eridan can’t hear, interrupting you before you can start yelling.  “… _I got some stuff I ain’t squared with you about, brother, we need to talk.  We gotta jam, for real._ ”

God you want that so badly, it’s enough to make you shake.

“..I should…” you start reluctantly, and he shakes his head, turns his back on the courtroom, and starts walking.

“Tomorrow night,” you say over Gamzee’s shoulder, and you see Feferi walk up and put a hand on Eridan’s shoulder as he nods, grinning like he can’t believe his luck.  “Tomorrow…night.”

You don’t hear him reply, but when you close your eyes you can see his grin behind your eyelids.

—

Your eyes are still sparking by the time people start filing out of the courtblock and Tavros gets helped off to get his pan looked at.  Eridan has vanished off with FF to calm down after the trial.  AA has gone with TV to make sure he’s okay.  At a time like this, everyone is looking for their moirails.

You don’t see Terezi anywhere.

You wait around for her for a few minutes, but then you feel like a pitystruck  _moron_  and you give up.  She’ll find you later.  You…trust her.  You  _will_  trust her, you are going to trust her, okay. 

So instead, you go after KK. 

You realize the second you reach his door that this was also a dumb idea.  You can hear GZ and KK still talking in there, probably having the jam of a lifetime, god, your face is going yellow just trying not to think about it.  Occasionally you can hear Karkat’s voice rise, or Gamzee’s—a lot of shouting and murmuring and a few sounds that might be sobs.  You settle back against the far wall, as far away from the door as possible, and wait.

You wait at least fifteen minutes, and the sounds of fraught emotion happening inside are almost gone but you’re still waiting when you hear the sound of clicking boots and a tapping cane and Terezi comes striding up to you.  She looks harried and tense.  She’s not smiling.

“TZ,” you say—more than a little bit relieved, okay, you didn’t know where she was and you could seriously use somebody to tell you it’s going to be okay—but she barely glances at you.  She steps past you to the door, lifts her cane and raps on it viciously, loud enough it echoes down the hallway.

It’s Gamzee that answers—he looks bleary and wobbly and the skin around his eyes is kind of puffy and wet and purple.  He manages a sort of half-smile.

“I,” he gets out, before Terezi steps up into his space.  Her smile is back, but it’s all wrong, it looks…carnivorous.

“When was the last time you saw the shooter?”

Gamzee stares at her.  You stare at her too, what the hell…?

“…what?”  Gamzee says finally, and Terezi goes  _tch_  through her teeth.

“The  _shooter,_ ” she repeats, very very clearly.  “The man who shot Karkat.”

 _Now_  Gamzee’s definitely awake—his ears flatten back angrily at the merest mention of  _‘shot Karkat’_.  “Oh,” he says, with a hint of a snarl.  “—the fuck  _about_ —“

“He’s dead,” says Terezi, and you jump as she  _slams_  her cane against the wall.  She’s not smiling now.  Her teeth are still bared, but now it’s more like a snarl.  “He has been  _murdered._   A cunning opponent.  The one responsible for the presence of Mr.  _Makara_ at the trial, I’m sure!”  She goes past you in a blur of red and teal and black and there’s a sharp  _clack_  and a grunt.  By the time you’re turned around Terezi has Gamzee pinned up against the wall with the tip of her cane jammed under his chin, lips peeled back from her pointy little white fangs.

“ _You wanted him dead,_ ” She snarls, and jabs the cane harder—Gamzee makes a strangled sound and swings a hand wildly but Terezi leans her weight onto the tip of her cane and he gags and chokes.  “ _WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!_ ”

“TZ!”

She doesn’t even look around.  You reach out with your powers instead, drag her back and get your arms wrapped around her, her hands pinned against her sides as she struggles.

“TZ— _Terezi!_ ”

“I was  _so close!_ ” She hisses, and struggles in your arms, all pointy elbows and dangerous corners.  “There was something  _here,_ I was—so—!”

You wrap both of you in sparks.  Terezi gasps and then coughs and sneezes, and then goes still, breathing hard.  Her cane slips out of her hands.  Your power catches it before it hits the ground.

“GZ,” you say, very quietly, trying not to hold your breath.  “…go.  Lock it.”

Terezi shakes in your arms for minutes after he’s gone back into the darkness of Karkat’s room, and she jumps when the lock clicks.  She feels very, very small when she’s pressed up against you; her back is knobbly and bent.  When you turn her around to hold onto her better, her chin is painfully pointy and poking your chest. 

“…god,” you say, when she finally goes almost still.  “…TZ, what the hell was that?”

For a long, long time, she doesn’t answer.  When she does, her voice is tiny and hoarse.

“ _I don’t know,_ ” she says.

“That’s not an answer.”

“I  _know._ ”  She takes a deep breath and lets it out again.  You drop the curtain of sparks around you, and she relaxes even further.  She’s not all that big, but you still have to use your powers a little bit to hold her up (goddammit and you see Gamzee carrying Karkat everywhere, you’re probably never going to be able to do that for her). 

“…I thought we were winning,” she says eventually into your shoulder, slowly, like she’s figuring it out as she goes.  “I thought we had won. I was ready to win again, I—I…should have been expecting this.”

“Still not like you to freak out,” you point out, because hell, you don’t know her that well but from what you’ve seen, you can guess.  She turns her face down away from you.  “TZ.  Come on.” 

“ _I thought I was supposed to be the soothing party in this relationship_ ,” she says, muffled into your shirt, and you’re sort of weirdly charmed to hear a sulky note to her voice you’ve never heard there before.

“That’s not how it works.”  You hitch her up a little bit with your powers so her glasses aren’t digging into your shoulder anymore.  “…spend enough time around KK, you’ll get an earful about _balanced pale relationships_  and  _reciprocity_ and…I dunno, I wasn’t listening.  Point is you have to talk to me about shit too.  It’s in the rules.” 

You’re not touchy-feely like GZ, and compared to KK your romance is fucking hopeless, but it’s still kind of nice as hell when she squeezes you really tight and then steps away and looks up at you.  You reach out, hook her glasses, and lift them away from her eyes, and she catches her breath and stiffens, uncertain and almost scared.  Both of her eyes are almost as red as your right one, you notice distantly.  They’re…really cool.  Kind of badass.  Pretty, you guess, even though you’re a shitty judge of that kind of thing. 

You sort of run one thumb underneath one of them, just because you wanted to and because fuck feeling awkward, and when Terezi chews on her lip and closes her eyes so you can’t look into them anymore, something really small and simple kind of breaks a little bit inside of you.

“—Sollux—”

“I think,” you say, breathless at the sudden certainty, “…we need.  To talk this shit out.”  And then you reach down and dare to sweep her dramatically up into your arms like a fucking hero.  “Your room or—” and then your body catches up with what’s happening, and your knees fold.

“ _Ughf_ ,” you say—or something like that, the spelling’s not important—there’s a pointy elbow in your stomach and Terezi is lying on most of your chest.  “Fuck.  Ow.  That was.  A bad idea.”

But Terezi is laughing, a real, genuine laugh, snorting and shaking and scrubbing at her eyes with the sleeve of her messed-up suit, and when she pries herself upright she holds out a  hand to help you up after her.

“…yours,” she says, when she’s done laughing.  “Yours, my dear, stupid, beautiful disaster.  And let us stay up through the night like terrible, obnoxious new lovers.”

“You’ve got a deal,” you say, and she loops her arm through yours and lets you lead her off through the dark.

—

When you get back to the couch, still sore in the throat and angry and confused as fuck Karkat sits up and looks on you and sees you holding your neck and looking a good deal of motherfucking unsettled.  You see him go all unchill all of a sudden like and try to sit up.  Little noise he makes is fucking painful to hear—you run the rest of the way to make him lie back down and press your hands on the spot so the cold of your hands can do some good for what’s is hurting. 

“What—” he bites his tongue again—you’re pressin’ down too hard, stupid,  _stupid_ , worst fucking palemate.  You ease up. “—w-what’s up?”

Oh.  Shit.  You don’t want him worrying right this second when he’s tired and you’re tired and he’ll want to talk about it and yell at folks about it and he does worry so much, your best little nubby friend. 

“…nothin’ big,” you say, and scoot your ass up on the couch with him, scoop him up good and tight between you and the couch like a big old hug.  You can hear him startin’ to want to ask you, so you shake your head and shoosh at him. “No best friend, get your chill on.  For serious now.  Not shit you need to worry on.”

You feel your bro start to try again, and then give up and lie back down.  He grabs your hand and pulls it back to the place he got shot, and you keep your hands all as gentle as you know how to be with them. 

“… _’ll make you tell me t-t-to…nnnnight,_ ” he says, and you know he’s tryin’ to give you a hard look like  _I’m so all meanin’ this_  but he yawns at the end and fucks it up by way of all bein’ too fucking cute.  “ _Get some sleep, bulgewheal, you need it._ ”

And you’re just settlin’ down and in to follow orders like a good little bleatbeast and finally get a good sleep with no fucked-up dreams and a warm little body you can all hold on at like an anchor…and your pocket buzzes at you.  You reach down and pull out what’s doin’ the thing, and it’s a little shiny bit of chitin, a palmhusk with your sign on it and everything.  You don’t ever use it, but it was a present from Tavros and it’s got the numbers all put in there and shit already, being as Karkat got it in his claws before you could fuck anything up and did all as what had to happen to make it work.  It’s all lit up now, and it says you got a message from… “AT”.

You tap your claw on the little flashing thing on the screen, and it comes up words, all soft and brown and warm on your eyes.

 _1’M OKAY,_ says your palmhusk, and you know the color and you can almost hear him say it and all of a sudden you can’t breathe of gratitude.   _tHAT, wAS LESS THAN REALLY GOOD, bUT 1 KNOW WHY YOU D1D 1T,_

And then, before you can even put claws to keys, it buzzes again.

_1 WAS GO1NG TO SAY THAT YOU SHOULD PROBABLY GO TO YOUR MO1RA1L, bUT, uH, wELL, 1 K1ND OF BET YOU’RE ALREADY W1TH H1M, sO THAT’S GOOD,_

And then again, before you can answer,

_tHAT WAS SCARY AND 1 HOPE YOU DON’T DO 1T AGA1N, bUT,_

_1 ST1LL L1KE YOU, a LOT,_

_oKAY?_

You send 3< and ,# and <# before you get your stupid dumbass fingers to do as what’s needed and send back a real <3 to him, and by that time Karkat’s noticed something’s up and he’s sitting up watching you fuck up tryin’ to send messages and looking like he’s worried at you.  He goes “..hey, put that down,” and takes your palmhusk out of your hands and that’s just the moment you start cryin’ again. 

For a couple seconds Karkat gets salty at you again, ‘ _what the fuck did you do to yourself this time you stupid chucklefuck what could you possibly have read on there in thirty seconds that would—_ ‘, but then he looks down at the palmhusk and back up at you fucking sobbing like a lost wriggler and he stops.  Kinda half-smiles.

“…he got back to you, huh,” he says.

You can’t get at where the words are in your pan, so you just nod instead. 

“I told him you were freaking out but you didn’t know how to ask how he was doing because you’re a leaky-panned shitnugget with communication problems,” says Karkat, and he paps your nasty wet face without even rollin’ his oculars at you even a littlest tiny motherfucking bit and puts your palmhusk down on the table by the couch so he can come over closer and hold onto you.  You’d forgotten you were scared on that until just this very fucking second, and even when you remembered it got pulled away again and the relief hurts in your thorax. 

This can’t last. 

It’s a punch to the guts, how certain that is, that cold, foggy fear hitting your pan.  It makes everything white and fearful and all sudden-like you can’t even hardly motherfucking move, just sitting, just still with the tears still drying up on your face.  It’s the fear that’s had you balancing on edges for perigees, but now it ain’t even fear anymore, it’s a certainty.  It’s a thing you know, right down to the core of you, that something is coming to tear you away from what you shouldn’t ever have gotten at all.

“Gamzee?”  Karkat says, and you just stare at him.  “Gamzee, what the fuck, what happened?  Hey talk to me,  _talk to me,_  don’t lock up like that, it creeps the hell out of—”

“Something bad’s got to happen,” you say, and he blinks at you with his mouth still open to talk.  Doesn’t get it, he doesn’t get this shit at all he doesn’t  _under-fucking-stand_.  “Somethin’—all this shit goin’ right for me, Karkat, brother, I don’t deserve all this!  I don’t—fucking—where’s the goddamn  _penance_ for all the bad shit I done?  I can’t hold all this and think like it’s mine, it’s got to go away—”

He grabs you and pulls you down to hold and you should pull back, you shouldn’t let him, but you do.  Just cling at him like the selfish fucker you are, holding on to shit you got no right to have.

“You don’t have to  _earn_  me, you fucking idiot,” Karkat says in your ear, but there’s a gentleness to it.  “For god’s sake, we  _just_  talked this out.  You think  _I_  deserve  _you_?  I’ve almost gotten you killed a hundred times, because I was too selfish to leave you alone so you’d be safe. I ran away from doing good for  _sweeps_.”

You try to shake your head but he growls and squeezes you harder, so hard you can’t breathe, so hard you don’t miss breathing. 

“ _But you’re—_ good,” you say, and he makes a noise like he’s so mad he could fucking cry.  He pulls away from you, looks you right in the eyes and even though he’s let go of you you still can’t motherfuckin’ breathe.

“You’re  _good too,_ ” he says.  “Do you want me to pull out the Sufferist bullshit on you?  Because I fucking will.”  He leans in close to you and holds your face in his hot hands, presses close and speaks against your forehead like a blessing.  “ _Book of the Night of Blood,_ ” he says, and for a second you panic because you—you don’t know that one, you’ve never heard—

And then you realize what he’s doin’ and why you don’t know the book he’s speaking from, and the fear takes you hard.  You try to pull away, babble  _no_ and _you can’t, not to me, not for me_  but he runs his hand over your face and murmurs  _shoooosh shoosh shhhshh…_  and you can’t bear to listen but you can’t bear to miss a word either. 

“ _Book of the Night of Blood,_ ” he says again.  “Chapter one, verse one.   _The…first sermon.  Of the second sufferer._ ”

He has to stop for a second, and you feel his breath tremble all scared and small.  Takes a breath.  Swallows it down into his thorax and lets it out so fast it doesn’t have time to be a sob. 

 _“…you’ve done some shit you wish you hadn’t, and that’s okay,_ ” he says finally, so small you can’t hardly hear him.  He pulls you close again, fits your face in his shoulder and rocks you a little as he talks.  “ _You feel like you’re worthless and that is fucking_ bullshit _because if you’re alive, you can never be_ worthless.”  His pusher pounds against your skin where your chests press up together, hot and fast and strong and you close your eyes and remember every word.  “ _I’m not a god and I’m nothing special and my word doesn’t mean anything more than yours, but…if it helps…_ I forgive you.”

Your hand shuts on his arm so tight he hisses out pain through his fangs, but he just says it again when you shake your head, again and again.

“ _I forgive you,”_ he says, “ _I forgive you.  I fucking forgive it all._ ”

You thought you were all cried out for the day but hell, you were wrong.  But you get every word.  You make fucking sure of that, you get  _every word._  

You don’t know how long he talks at you.  Sometime in the middle you stop trying to fight away from the words you don’t deserve and start clinging at him instead, and he just lets you while he talks, soothing at you and quieter than you ever heard.

When he’s done he lets you go and you’re too wrapped up in all he said to stop him—just lie back with your eyes shut as he lays you down, and smile from all the words filling you up inside.  He sighs a bit at you and pushes hair here and there out of your eyes.

“… _got all that?_ ” he asks, most to himself, but you nod and he jumps.  “—fuck!  God, I thought you were asleep.”

“ _…wouldn’t miss a fucking word, brother,_ ” you say, just barely out loud, and yawn so big your bones creak at you.  “ _Got it all._ ”

“Really?  Fuck.”  He sighs again, and you open up your eyes a little and look at him, sitting over you in the dark with his eyes all red and the little gold shine where his horns all getting to poking up through his hair.  Makes you want to get your hands in it, touch his face, but you gotta stop and appreciate, get a good long motherfucking look at the picture of him first.  While he talked at you the moon’s setting through the high, small windows over you, the silver’s all over him like melted-up metal as he looks down at you and put a hand hot and close in the middle of your thorax.

“…there’s a storm coming,” says Karkat, and he puts his hand up to your neck and puts his hard fingertips on your scars and hides them away from his eyes.  Out over the roof of the palace you hear the wind get to moving fast and hear its shallow howl and you shiver a little bit, because his eyes are so red and the rest of you where he doesn’t touch—it’s so cold.

But in here he’s warm and you’re warm and this is safe, so you close your eyes against the shivers and you pull him back down to you.  “Not yet,” you tell—or ask?  Fuck, you haven’t got a first clue. But it makes him smile.

“…not yet,” he says back, and for now, it’s right.  He picks up a sopor patch and presses it on your arm real gentle.  Runs his hand up and down your arm so you can feel the warm.  “Not yet.  Not right now.”

You run over the words of the first motherfucking sermon of the second sufferer as you go warm and soft at the edges, the words he said to you and you only.  None of the whispers that have taken to live in your pan with you, no laughing no fear crawling through your bones, just your brother’s first sermon, whispered in your ear. 

Those are what take you off to sleep; the sermon, the quiet, the warm and the dark as it covers you up and comes near around you.

—

You lie awake for a while after you hear Gamzee finally fall asleep next to you, and just watch him.  There’s a still kind of peace to him that you haven’t felt for a long, long time; he doesn’t twitch or growl in his sleep, doesn’t murmur those little fragments of words that make your pusher seem to shudder inside you, doesn’t squeeze you like you’re his only lifeline.  There’s the faintest edge of a smile at the corners of his mouth, and you feel like you’re been beaten with a big fucking stick but you feel better than you have in a long, long time.

…you can’t reach the sopor patches. 

After a lot of awkward crawling and several failed attempts to pry yourself out from under one of Gamzee’s clinging, skinny arms, you do eventually get one of the little, lime green patches and sink back down onto the couch with it, victorious.  Your bullet wound is fucking killing you and eviscerating your corpse with a thousand poison claws, but when you lie back down and smooth the patch onto your chest Gamzee immediately curls back around you in his sleep.  It’s not the desperate cling of the night before you got shot, and it’s not the restlessness of the nights before that, when he would roll away and huddle in on himself in his sleep.  He sleeps quietly and you…

Well, maybe you’re kind of a creep, because you take his hand as he sleeps, guide it up and rest it on your cheek.  His fingers twitch, and your overstretched body reads that with something deep down and gut-level instinctual.  Some of the pain eases.  Your tight shoulders start to loosen a little. 

He’s right, this can’t possibly last.  Something this good has to come with some kind of karmic destiny shit, right?  But right now, he’s safe and he’s finally calm and you’re alive.  The edges of your pan are slowly drifting away like fog as the sopor patch starts to hit you, leaving behind darkness. 

You roll over and curl up, and you think you hear a voice on the edge of your mind whisper  _sleep, child.  Karkat, sleep._

You sleep, and this time you don’t dream.


End file.
